


everywhere at the end of time

by tuntekorpp



Series: everywhere at the end of time [1]
Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Kate Fuller, Bedsharing, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Needs Therapy, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts/Self-Harm (very brief), POV Kate Fuller, Panic Attacks, Past Drug Use, Post-Amaru (From Dusk Till Dawn), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, kate is a brother magnet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28080093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuntekorpp/pseuds/tuntekorpp
Summary: She opens her eyes to find Seth, crouching down in front of her, his face creased with worry, his hands hovering just shy of touching her, like he isn’t sure if he has the right to."It's over," she says and it comes out like a question."Yeah. Yeah, it is," he says and he nods several times, brings his hands to each side of her face and she remembers what she said to him the last time he looked at her like that.She's too powerfulandI can'tandYou should've killed me when you had the chanceandI don't forgive you. "It's over, Kate. She's gone."She closes her eyes. She's afraid of what is going to happen when she finally goes to sleep, but for the moment, Seth is here, his hands cradling her face, and he smells like smoke and gunpowder and sweat, and as long as she can focus on him, his presence, she can remember what is real.
Relationships: Kate Fuller & Richard Gecko, Kate Fuller & Santanico Pandemonium | Kisa, Kate Fuller/Seth Gecko
Series: everywhere at the end of time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099808
Comments: 203
Kudos: 122





	1. Part I - 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge shout out to @FortySevens for making me fall into the FDTD rabbit hole and then be awesome enough to beta read this fic for me!
> 
> The title of this fic is from the eponymous musical project by The Caretaker, which is the only thing I listened to while writing the first two parts of this fic. Warning: it's dark and angsty.
> 
> Fun fact: I hadn't planned on writing this fic at all and I was supposed to be finishing a bunch of WIPs during Nanowrimo but then I started thinking about this and I haven't been able to stop since. So there you go. Enjoy.

She looks over her shoulder and Seth’s there, watching her, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Richie wraps an arm around his shoulders, but he keeps looking at her, his eyes fleeting briefly to his brother when Richie says something to him.

Dust and ash blow around her, the sounds of wood cracking and wind filling the silence as the ghost town settles once more. She can still taste the acrid air from Xibalba on her lips. The red halo of her hair in the periphery of her vision is a reminder that everything happened, that it wasn’t a fever induced nightmare. She tears her eyes away from Seth, glances down instead at her hands. There’s crusted blood under her fingernails, over her hands, dried from running down from her bandaged wrists.

She died.

Again.

She died and this time it wasn’t a malevolent entity bringing her back. Suddenly, her coat is too tight, the leather constricting around her body, like Amaru’s mind taking over hers. She rips the jacket off and lets it fall in the dirt at her feet.

There’s a white bandage at the crook of her elbow. She has Seth’s blood coursing through her veins now.

She’s alive.

She’s alive and she’s free.

She falls to her knees, like a puppet whose strings have been cut. She closes her eyes, her throat bared to the sky.

There’s nothing left to do.

She doesn’t hear the hurried footsteps coming closer to her until they’re right there. She opens her eyes to find Seth crouching down in front of her, his face creased with worry, his hands hovering just shy of touching her, like he isn’t sure if he has the right to.

“Hey,” he breathes, low and soft, and so different from the last words they had before her death. She doesn’t count the brief moments they had when she had been able to keep Amaru at bay, just long enough to tell him to run, to beg him to kill her, to warn him of Amaru’s plan. The man in front of her is also so far from the man who yelled at her that everyone she had ever loved was dead, right before leaving her on the side of a dusty road with their score and his car.

His beard is gone, replaced by stubble and scruff that can’t hide the hollowness of his cheeks. His eyes have lost the glazed sheen brought by the heroin and hard liquor, something old and weary taking root in them instead. His hair is shorter, grayer. He looks exhausted, she realizes, now that the adrenalin high they had been riding is over. 

"It's over," she says and it comes out like a question.

"Yeah. Yeah, it is," he says and he nods several times, brings his hands to each side of her face and she remembers what she said to him the last time he looked at her like that. _She's too powerful_ and _I can't_ and _You should've killed me when you had the chance_ and _I don't forgive you_. "It's over, Kate. She's gone."

She closes her eyes. She's afraid of what is going to happen when she finally goes to sleep, but for the moment, Seth is here, his hands cradling her face, and he smells like smoke and gunpowder and sweat, and as long as she can focus on him, his presence, she can remember what is real.

She is drifting in and out of consciousness, snapping awake every time she gets in too deep, the surge of panic only recoiling when her eyes fall on Seth, relaxed in the driver seat, his eyes crinkling at something Richie said. When she leans against the window and looks at the desert, she feels the weight of his gaze on her. She glances up and meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. She sees the question in them and she gives him the barest nod. He returns it and it's like they're back in Mexico before that hit on the salon, before everything went to Hell, like they don't need words between them to understand each other. His attention goes back to the road and she tries not to fall asleep again.

The sun has set when they finally stop in a motel parking lot. Richie is the one going out to the front desk.

"I might be part snake but at the moment I'm the most decent looking of us three," he says when Seth opens his mouth to protest.

He's still covered in dirt and ash, dried blood flaking on his face. And her… well, she doesn't even know what the hell she looks like, but she'd rather not interact with the world if she can help it.

Richie exits the car, door slamming behind him, and Seth turns in his seat to look at her. He's worried, that much is clear, but she knows he isn't going to say something as stupid as _Are you okay?_ because neither of them is and they're both very much aware of it.

"How are you feeling?" he asks instead and somehow it's better and worse at the same time. She can't just say yes or no. She needs to think about it before she can answer, too many possible answers swimming in her head. She's beyond tired, a bone deep ache that has taken hold of her and feels like it will last for the rest of her life. She feels violated and sick and disgusted and horrified and guilty. She's relieved too and there's more guilt coming with that. She wants to shut down the world and scrub her soul clean, and it feels like nothing short of setting herself on fire will be enough to cleanse her.

But Seth is looking at her with concern lining his face and kindness in his eyes and she can't say any of that. She can't lie either. He's always been able to see right through her lies, her the little church girl who had been taught to always tell the truth and be honest, him the professional thief, criminal mastermind, who lies and cons as naturally as he breathes. She'd never stood a chance at being able to bullshit him.

"I don't know."

Her voice sounds hoarse and flat. It's different from the voice she heard Amaru speak with, but it's not the voice of Kate Fuller, Bethel's preacher's daughter, either. Just like she isn't that girl anymore.

She used to not be able to read Seth's face, back in Mexico. He was always disguising his true feelings behind an arrogant and yet charming devil-may-care attitude, some anger boiling right under the surface, just enough of it showing so that people would see the danger in him. The first time she saw something truly raw and unguarded, she had just regained consciousness in her own body, Amaru too weakened from the torture to stay in charge. Her mouth tasted like blood and her body was a maze of pain and Seth's face had come into focus in front of her, and he was afraid, lost, heartbroken.

His face looks the same now. She doesn't want him to look like that, wishes she could reassure him. She can't. She can't find the strength to tell him that she'll be okay. That she just needs a shower and some sleep. Can’t find the strength to believe it enough herself to be able to convince him.

He extends his arm and takes the hand she has resting on her knee. He squeezes it.

"Okay," he says softly. "We'll figure it out."

She gives him the shadow of a smile and he only stops looking at her when Richie comes back to the car. Seth drops her hand and turns to Richie, who directs him to a room at the back of the building. He parks in front of it and they get out.

They take out bags from the trunk and it hits her now that she has nothing but the clothes on her back, a pair of leather pants and a black tank top that she wants to tear off her body and burn.

"C'mon," Seth says next to her, his fingers a feather-light touch on her bare arm. 

She follows him inside. There's two queen beds, a table, a couch and a TV screen mounted in a corner. She sees her reflection there, and despite the darkness, she distinguishes the unruly hair, the dark smudges around her eyes. 

She wants to smash the screen. She brings a hand to her throat and it's bare, her cross lost next to a blood well in the middle of the desert. Her last tie to her old life, buried in the sand.

Seth drops his bag on the couch. He's covered in dust but makes no moves toward the bathroom. Richie puts his on the table before going to the door again.

"I'm gonna go find some food, any requests?" he asks them, like it's something they do, a habit of theirs, a normal occurrence, like they're simply on a road trip and it's his turn to go get dinner.

She thinks of food and can't remember the last time she ate something that wasn't someone's soul. 

No. Not her. Amaru.

It wasn't her. 

It was Amaru. 

She can't remember. And yet, the thought of eating makes her nauseous.

"Kate?" Richie says, and from the way he sounds, it's not the first time he calls her name.

Seth is in front of her, ducking his head so he can catch her eyes.

"I don't know," she mumbles.

She sees the look the brothers share. They're worried. She wants to apologize. She doesn’t, unable to find the words.

Richie starts closing the door after him.

"Wait," she calls before she even knows she is going to do it. Richie pushes the door open. "Can you," she starts and her voice cracks. She swallows and tries again. "Can you find me some hair dye?" she finishes with her eyes on his shoes.

He's silent and next to her, Seth reaches for her but stops before touching her shoulder.

"Yeah, sure," Richie says and leaves.

Being alone with Seth shouldn't be weird. They spent nearly three months together in Mexico, having no one but each other, sharing crappy hotel rooms and stolen cars, constantly in each other's space because there was nowhere else to go. It was never strange, never uncomfortable, then.

Too many things have happened. 

She's fully aware that the last time they talked to each other in what wasn't a life or death situation or in between bouts of possession, he was yelling at her and leaving her alone in the night.

He asked for forgiveness, once. At the time, she said no. She doesn’t remember why she said no. Maybe it was the pain from the torture. Maybe it was because of how hard it was to keep Amaru at bay long enough to warn Seth of her plan. Maybe it was because she was still angry at him and she wanted to hurt him back. 

Whatever it was, the result was the same. He’d said sorry, frantically holding her face, asking her to fight, to stay conscious, to stay with him when he’d been the one to leave her the first time around, and between clenched teeth and tears and the taste of blood, she’d said _I don’t forgive you_. 

She’ll probably never forget how he had recoiled at her words. How his face fell. How hurt he was. 

She doesn’t feel any satisfaction knowing that she’d been able to hurt him, same as he had hurt her. She feels sick just remembering it. 

He’s still here, inches from her, and she hasn't moved. She’s staring at the wall, where a piece of wallpaper is missing next to an electrical plug. She should do something. She should remove her shoes. She should remove Amaru’s makeup. She should take a shower and boil herself alive. She should shave her head. She should. She should. She shouldshe shouldsheshouldsheshould—

She stays rooted in her spot and the only thing that changes is that she can’t breathe. There’s a vice around her lungs and she can’t breathe.

“Hey, hey, Kate,” Seth says but she can’t look at him. “Kate, it’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe,” he repeats and his hand brushes her cheek and she startles but she still can’t breathe. “Look at me, Kate. It’s gonna be okay.” She tears her eyes from the wall and then she’s looking at him. “Good, now breathe.” She shakes her head. She can’t. “Yes, you can. Come on, follow me.”

He inspires deeply and then releases and his gaze is steady on her and she’s shaking but she’s breathing and he encourages her and she breathes again and it hurts but he’s here, his thumbs stroking each side of her face and—

She’s crying. 

Seth pulls her to him and she’s sobbing into his ash-covered waistcoat and his arms are firmly around her, one hand on her back and one in her hair and he’s murmuring against her temple, a litany of _I’m here_ and _it’s gonna be okay_ and _you’re gonna be okay_ and _you’re safe_ and _it’s over_.

She breathes in deep and despite the blood, the dirt, the ash, she still picks up his distinct Seth smell. The smell that had come to mean home when they were in Mexico. No matter the random body wash and shampoo they had, the laundry detergent they found at laundromats, the hotel rooms, the drugs, the alcohol, that scent was there when he was and smelling it meant safety.

Even now, after everything, it helps her calm down. Her breathing evens out and the stream of reassurances dies down on Seth’s lips. 

She wipes her eyes and black makeup smudges on her hands.

“Do you wanna shower first?” Seth asks. 

She shakes her head. “I’m gonna wait for the hair dye.”

“Okay.” He takes a step back and catches her eyes again. He looks at her and she knows he’s asking if she’s going to be alright on her own while he showers. She nods and he nods back and he lets go of her. She has to remind herself to keep breathing.

She turns on the TV with the sound on the lowest setting. Telenovela and commercials. She sits at the foot of a bed and kicks the boots off. She stares at the screen without making any sense of what she’s seeing until the front door opens and Richie steps in.

“Anything good?” he asks with a jerk toward the screen.

She shrugs. “Not really.”

He puts down a greasy bag of food on the table and holds out another plastic bag to her.

“I got you some stuff.”

She takes it and opens it. A box of hair dye, dark brown, makeup remover wipes, a pack of cotton underwear, black, a pack of tank tops, white and gray, a pack of socks, black, a pair of sweatpants, grey, and a pair of knock off Converse sneakers, black.

“Thank you, Richie,” she says around the knot in her throat.

Seth steps out of the bathroom then, a cloud of steam trailing behind him, only wearing a pair of black sweatpants. His chest is mottled with cuts and bruises of different sizes, ranging from yellow to black, but she’s relieved when she can’t see anything resembling needle marks on his arms. The cut on his cheekbone looks like it’s bleeding again.

“Catch,” Richie calls as he throws him a white pouch. Seth catches it automatically. “First aid kit,” Richie says. “You might need a stitch or two,” he adds, gesturing to his face. 

“Thanks,” Seth says and sits on the couch, opening the pouch and surveying its contents. “All yours,” he tells her, jerking his chin to the bathroom. 

Richie sits next to Seth and grabs the antiseptic wipes, making no indication that he wants the bathroom first.

She grabs the plastic bag and locks herself in the bathroom, just as Richie starts dabbing at Seth’s cuts and Seth curses. 

Her breath is trembling. She leans forward on the sink, trying to muster the courage to look at herself in the mirror and failing. She takes some deep breaths, trying to remember how it felt to feel safe, the ghost of Seth’s arms around her.

She rummages through the bag for the wipes and starts rubbing at her face. She scrubs harshly and she distantly thinks that her skin is going to break out in a rash, but she doesn’t stop and the wipes are covered in black makeup and dirt and blood. 

There’s a small hairbrush at the bottom of the bag and she uses it to untangle her hair, but it’s too long, too curly, too unruly. She wants to tear it off her head.

She opens the door. Richie is stitching Seth’s cheekbone, but Seth’s eyes immediately lock in on her. 

“Any of you have scissors?” she asks. “I need to cut this fucking hair.”

“There’s a second pair in the kit,” Richie answers without stopping his stitching. She walks to them, finds the scissors that aren’t bloody and surrounded by soaked up cotton balls and loose sewing thread, and goes back to the bathroom. 

The scissors aren’t big but she doesn’t care. She would have done it with a fucking pocket knife if that’s what it had come to. She raises her eyes to the mirror. Her face is dirty and there’s still some black rimming her eyes, but it’s nothing like how Amaru looked. 

She gathers her hair on each side of her face and cuts away, removing everything below her shoulders. Long red locks fall in the sink and she gets further away from the spectre of Amaru with each snip. Then she takes the chopped off hair and stuffs it in the trash can, dumps the dye on what’s left of her hair and waits. The box says fifteen minutes, but she doesn’t have a watch or a phone, so she just sits against the tub and mutters a series of Our Fathers and a few Ave Marias, just like she used to do when she was a kid and she had to pass the time without anything to distract her. 

The first time she had done that, she was in the arrival hall of an airport, her grandparents next to her, waiting for her mother and father to cross through the doors with her new brother in their arms. She couldn’t move from her spot because her grandma was afraid she would get lost, and the hall was loud and noisy and she wanted to see her parents.

“How many Our Fathers do you think you can recite until they’re here?” her grandpa had asked. “I’m betting seven! Do you think you can do better than that?”

She had been too happy to take on the challenge, wanting to prove how fast and how well she could pray. 

It used to mean something then. 

Now, she mumbles the words, but nothing swells inside of her. She doesn’t feel anything. They’re just words and the meaning is lost on her. 

She stops and tries instead to remember all the classic movies Seth made her watch in those shitty hotel rooms in Mexico. She goes through the list twice before deciding that she’s done. She stands up, strips and steps into the shower. The water runs black from the dye and the grime and she only remembers that she has bandages around her wrists when they’re completely soaked. It doesn’t seem like she’s bleeding again so she just lets them be. She’ll have to ask Seth or Richie to help her redo them. She doesn’t want to see or touch her wrists any more than she has to.

Once the water runs clear, she scrubs herself with the generic body wash on the edge of the tub then stands under the scalding water. When all the soap is washed away and her skin is red from the heat, she steps out of the tub, dries herself, towels her hair, and gets dressed with what Richie bought her. She has to roll the waistband of the sweatpants a couple of times to make them stay up, but the rest fits. She grabs Amaru’s old clothes and dumps them in the trash on top of the red hair.

When she gets out of the bathroom, Richie is slouched on a bed, watching TV and slurping horchata from a bright pink cup, and Seth is at the table, a burger in hand and his gun in front of him. They glance at her and Richie offers her a small smile. She finds herself returning it and it feels foreign on her face. She joins Seth at the table and he takes out a wrapped burger and a portion of fries from the bag. She takes the fries.

She has to force herself, but she munches on them, despite the nausea, despite the fact that everything tastes like ash and blood. Seth’s bruises are hidden under a long sleeved henley and the row of stitches under his eye is neat and clean. Richie knows what he’s doing. She wonders how many times they’ve had to patch each other up. How it felt the first time they had to. 

She brings her knees to her chest, picks fries one by one. Doesn’t touch the burger. There’s another cup of horchata in the bag and she knows it’s for her. She’s heard Seth bitch about the stuff enough times to know he’s not planning on having some, ever. She takes it, washes the salt and grease of the fries with sugar and cinnamon. The taste of ash and blood doesn’t go away.

“Can you redo my bandages?” she asks. 

Seth stops chewing and looks down at her wrists and the soggy white gauze. A shadow passes through his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says and wipes the grease off his face and hands with a napkin. 

Then he stands up and goes to wash his hands before coming back with the first aid kit. She pushes the rest of their dinner to the side and lays her arms on the table. He’s careful when he peels the bandages away. He stops when she winces and only starts again when she gives him a tiny nod. She closes her eyes when the last of the gauze is removed and bile rises in her throat. Eating those fries was maybe not the greatest idea.

“Breathe,” he tells her softly.

She breathes in through her nose and breathes out through her mouth, focusing on how his thumb is stroking the side of her wrist. She swallows, opens her eyes. The skin is red and raised around the wounds, blood pearling all along the slits. 

He takes an antiseptic wipe and cleans them, one hand working while the other rubs soothing circles on her intact skin. It stings and it burns and her eyes well up, but she keeps breathing, keeps focusing on Seth’s thumb and Seth’s warmth and Seth’s smell. He applies butterfly stitches, then wraps her wrists in clean bandages again.

“Thank you,” she mumbles when he’s done, then she wraps her arms around her knees again and lays her head on them. Seth touches her shoulder and she startles. He isn’t looking at her face, though, instead focusing on the gash on her bicep and oh, she had forgotten about it and how he had duct taped her arm in the tunnel, trying to joke about how she should have been at prom dancing with some guy from Sunday school. She had seen through his strained smile, though. She had seen the guilt and the self loathing and the pain underneath. 

He is careful when he applies antiseptic and then tapes a square of gauze on top of it, smoothing the edges of the medical tape with his thumb. 

“Thanks,” she says softly again. 

His eyes flick up to hers and he strokes the uninjured skin just above her elbow, squeezes it briefly as if to say _No need to thank me_ , but he doesn’t say anything. 

Richard is the one who eats her burger in the end, but then he announces he needs a proper meal and leaves the motel room.

Seth doesn’t wince or grimace or frown or do any of the things he used to do when Richard’s new diet was mentioned, so she guesses they have found a way that works for the both of them. Something deep inside her is relieved that they aren’t fighting anymore. Then she wonders what role her death had in that.

Seth takes his gun apart and cleans it. She watches him do it, the way she had a hundred times before. His hands are steady, everything more muscle memory than anything else. No hesitation. In fact, she doesn’t remember a time where he hesitated to do anything. He was always going full on, no matter how bad of an idea it was. Except—except when she begged him to kill her, when they both thought there was no way to save her. He hesitated then.

Seth reassembles his gun and puts it back on the table.

“You should try to sleep,” he says after some long minutes of silence.

She glances up. He’s watching her, his arms crossed over his chest, leaning back in the chair. She’s still folded on herself, hugging her knees to her. She feels like she’s going to fall apart like a house of cards if she stands up. She’s terrified of letting herself sleep, but she knows Seth and he won’t let her even try to pretend that she doesn’t need to rest. 

So she nods and stands up on wobbly legs and gets under the covers of the bed closest to the door. She rolls on her side and brings her knees up.

“Do you want me to turn the light off?” Seth asks somewhere behind her.

“No,” she croaks.

She closes her eyes and focuses on the sounds around her. There’s the highway behind the motel. The rustle of fabric that tells her that Seth is moving around the room. Someone watching TV in the next room. A car door closing in the parking lot. The buzz of something electric. The door opens and closes and there are voices, just outside their room, low and even. The door opens again. A different rustle of fabric. Richie. The bathroom door. The rush of the shower. A dog barking. The bathroom door again. The other bed creaking under weight. Then breathing, deep and even.

She can’t hear Seth in the room.

She opens her eyes. The overhead light is off, but the one next to the couch isn’t. She can see Richie in the other bed, facing away from her, his glasses on the nightstand between the two beds. The couch is empty and so are the chairs around the table. There is no light in the bathroom. 

She pushes back the covers and stands up, padding silently to the door. A glance through the window shows her Seth, sitting in a chair in front of their room. 

He turns his head toward her when she opens the door. He has a small bottle of alcohol in his hand, a cigarette in the other.

She sits on the floor next to him.

“Can I have some?” she asks.

He holds up the bottle wordlessly. She takes a swig and it’s cheap tequila and disgusting. She takes another one.

“Thought you went to sleep,” he says.

She snorts humorlessly. “Yeah.”

She drinks again and gives it back to him. She hugs her knees to her chest again, shivers from the cold night air.

“Aren’t you going to sleep?” she asks.

“In a minute.”

They watch the cars zooming past on the highway. So many people who have no idea how close they came to dying, to be overcome by the legions of Hell. And the only reason they didn’t is sitting next to her, drinking bottom shelf tequila. Because he brought her back. Because he let her go. 

She doesn’t particularly feel like a hero. She knows he doesn’t either. And yet, they succeeded. She should be happy. She should be relieved. 

She shivers again. 

“You cold?”

She shrugs. “A bit.”

He doesn’t tell her to go back inside, under the warmth of the blankets, like she half expects him to. Instead he takes off his henley and hands it to her. She shrugs it on. The sleeves are too long and the collar slides off her shoulder, but it’s soft and warm from his body heat and it smells like him. It feels safe. She pulls the sleeves over her hands. 

She wants to ask him questions she knows he won’t have answers to. Am I ever going to be alright? Is it going to pass? What am I going to do now? Why didn’t you shoot me? What would you have done if I hadn’t come back from Xibalba?

He finishes the flask. Then he stands up from the chair, only to sit down on the ground next to her. He’s only wearing his undershirt, but he radiates heat like a furnace, unbothered by the cold. She tips sideways until her head hits his shoulder and he wraps an arm around her. She closes her eyes. Lips press against the crown of her head. 

“I missed you,” she murmurs like a confession.

He tenses up for a fraction of second, but then his arm draws her closer and he’s resting his head against hers.

“I’m sorry, Kate. For everything.”

His voice is sad and full of resignation. He isn’t expecting anything from her. She knows he’s thinking of her crying and bleeding and telling him _I don’t forgive you_. She knows because she’s thinking about it too. 

“I forgive you,” she says softly.

“You don’t have to,” he says after a while and his voice is choked up, hoarse.

She leans away from him, just enough to be able to look at him in the eye. “I know. But I do.”

There’s that heartbroken look on his face again, but then he’s holding her against his chest, a hand in her hair, his head tucked in the crook of her neck.

They stay like this long enough that the cold starts to seep through the sweatpants and her butt starts to go numb. 

“You ready to go back inside?” he asks in a low voice. 

She nods against him and they detangle from each other slowly. He stands up and holds out a hand to her, helping her to her feet then leading her inside. 

“What are you doing?” she asks when he sits on the couch.

He raises an eyebrow, like he’s confused by her question. “Going to sleep?”

She stares at him, then at the couch, which looks like the most uncomfortable piece of furniture ever created. She’s not sure it’s even big enough for him and he’s not nearly as tall as Richie. 

“You’re not sleeping on that.”

“Kate.”

“Come on. It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve shared,” she says. She’s ready to argue that if he’s going to be driving the entire next day, he needs to be rested. Ready to say that he’s going to wake up with a crick in his neck and he’s going to be grumpy and annoying all day. 

She isn’t ready to tell him that she doesn’t think she’s going to be able to sleep if she’s alone. 

But she doesn’t need to say anything. In the end, he turns off the light next to the couch and joins her on the other side of the bed. She slips under the covers and immediately folds into the fetal position. He settles on his side, facing her, one arm under his pillow, the other between them.

“I’m scared,” she whispers. Somehow it’s easier to admit it in the dark. 

“I know,” he replies. He extends his arm and lightly touches her shoulder. He isn’t pulling her to him, but she straightens her legs and shuffles closer anyway, until his arm is completely around her and she can bury her face in his chest.

“Is this okay?” 

They never did this before. Back in Mexico, sharing a bed meant being on either side of the bed, as far away from each other as possible, and usually Seth was barely conscious, either from being drunk or high or recovering from an injury. 

Seth’s hand rubs circles on her back. “Yeah. Go to sleep, Kate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Moodboard on tumblr](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/637613293777928192/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-i-1-she)


	2. Part I - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve seen what Seth becomes when you’re not around,” she says. He seems to stiffen next to her. “Besides, I have enough blood on my hands without adding you to the list.”  
> “It wasn’t you.”  
> “It feels like it was me. I could see everything. Feel everything. I remember every single person she killed. Even now, I look at my hands and I can’t be certain that I’m in control.”  
> “Yeah. I know the feeling.”  
> “Does it ever go away?”

She wakes up with her heart hammering in her chest, terror seizing her entire body like a vice. She’s flat on her back, Seth on his stomach next to her with his arm slung over her waist and his head against her neck, snoring softly and evenly. She forces herself to breathe deeply, tries to remind herself that it’s over, that she’s safe. She glances to the side. Richie’s bed is empty.

She tries to relax and fall asleep again, but every time she closes her eyes, the terror comes back, shapeless and undefined but there. She can’t remember what her nightmare was about precisely, but she can take a few guesses. Amaru killing Scott, Amaru killing Seth, Amaru killing Richie, or just the plain and simple memories of all the things Amaru did in her body. She turns her head to the other side. Seth hasn’t stirred. She slips slowly out from under his arm and he groans softly before nuzzling the pillow. She pulls the covers back over him. He’s frowning in his sleep and she has to resist the temptation to smooth the line between his eyebrows with her thumb. She doesn’t want to risk waking him up.

She uses the bathroom, still avoiding her reflection in the mirror. When she exits, Seth is still asleep but she can see Richie outside their room. 

The night isn’t as dark anymore, the first lights of dawn piercing through. Richie is in his suit, hair neatly combed back, with a cup of coffee in his hand.

“Hey,” she says as she joins him.

“Hey. Did I wake you?”

She shakes her head. “Nightmare.”

She sits on the chair. They watch the sky turn lighter and lighter. She wonders if he should go back inside before the sun is fully out, but Richie doesn’t seem anxious. He lights a cigarette.

“Kate?” he says and she turns to him. “Thank you.”

She frowns. “For what?”

“For pulling me out of Xibalba. I—I’m responsible for Carlos shooting you. And you were right, I was being a selfish bastard and I’m truly sorry for everything that happened. You told me you hoped I would burn in hell, and you were right to. But yesterday you pulled me out of it. You didn’t have to do that, so, thank you.”

She looks away, tastes the words in her mouth before speaking. “I’ve seen what Seth becomes when you’re not around,” she says. He seems to stiffen next to her. “Besides, I have enough blood on my hands without adding you to the list.”

“It wasn’t you.”

“It feels like it was me. I could see everything. Feel everything. I remember every single person she killed. Even now, I look at my hands and I can’t be certain that I’m in control.”

Richie crushes the butt of his cigarette on the asphalt. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

“Does it ever go away?”

He doesn’t reply immediately. “In time,” he eventually says, before going inside.

She stays on the chair and watches the sun rise.

She doesn’t know how long it is before Seth joins her. His hair is still tousled from sleep.

“Breakfast?” he asks with a yawn. “Do you wanna go out or should I just bring it here?” he adds after she nods.

“Let me put on my shoes.”

Richie is on his bed, watching TV. “Can you bring me back some horchata and sweet potato fries?” he asks.

“Sure,” she replies and she tries to smile at him. She’s not sure she succeeds, but he smiles back all the same.

Seth drives them to a diner not too far from the motel and she tries not to think about the fact that they’re going to be surrounded by people. It’s still early so it shouldn’t be packed, but it’s still more people than she’s comfortable with. 

“I can just go order and bring everything back here,” Seth says, after he has parked the car and she’s made no move to get out.

She shakes her head. “No. It’s okay. I’m gonna have to face civilization again at some point, right?”

He looks at her like he’s evaluating what she just said as well as her physical state. “If at any moment you wanna leave, just say the word and we’ll be out of there, alright?” he says sternly.

“Okay,” she replies and her voice is only slightly shaking.

They get out of the car and Seth is immediately by her side. He doesn’t have his arm around her, but he’s close enough that their arms brush as they walk to the front door. Her lungs don’t feel like they’re encased in lead anymore.

They take a table away from the few other patrons. 

The waitress comes over and fills their mugs with coffee before asking them what they want. And she just. Freezes. She doesn’t know what she wants. She can’t bring herself to grab the menu and look. There’s too many choices, too many things offered and she can’t choose. She stares at the formica table top and somewhere near her, she hears Seth use his most charming voice and then the waitress retreats. 

“Kate?” He reaches over, gently puts his hand on her forearm. She looks up. He’s frowning and the lines around his eyes are tense. “Do you wanna go?”

She shakes her head. “No. I’m okay. It’s alright.”

He looks like he wants to argue, but then thinks better of it. “I got you blueberry pancakes,” he says instead.

“Thank you.”

He takes back his hand, wrapping it around his coffee mug. She adds one packet of sugar and two pods of cream to hers, and she doesn’t realize she’s done it without having to think about it until she takes a sip. Somehow, remembering how she likes her coffee is as much of a comfort as chopping off her hair was. 

The waitress comes back with their orders. Seth digs into his eggs and bacon and she pours syrup on her pancakes. She slowly eats them, tiny portion by tiny portion. She has no appetite, but she knows she’s lost a lot of blood, knows she needs to eat if she is to get better, at least physically.

“What’s the plan?” she asks when Seth is done with his food and the waitress has refilled their mugs a second time. She still has half of her pancakes to eat.

“The plan?”

“Yeah.”

He leans against the back of the booth. “Go back to Jacknife Jed’s, I guess.”

“What’s that?”

Something passes over his face like he just remembered that she spent the last six months locked away and has virtually no clue of what happened in his life beside the few things she got through Amaru when she tried to kill him in the junkyard. 

He tells her about the compound and how he and Richie got to run it, how it’s the closest thing they have to a stable home. 

There’s no doubt in his voice that they’re going back there, all three of them.

She doesn’t finish her pancakes.

  
  


They drive back to the motel with Richie’s food and they’re back on the road an hour later. She’s in the passenger seat, Richie lying down in the backseat, his jacket over his head. She pretends not to see Seth glancing at her regularly. She doesn’t know what he is watching out for. Is he expecting her to break down crying? To turn back into Amaru and murder them? 

She leans against the window and closes her eyes. She doesn't sleep.

It’s the end of the afternoon when Seth stops the car in front of Jacknife Jed’s, but he doesn’t get out of the car. Richie exits with a “Fucking finally” and he strides into the bar, his jacket flung over his head to protect himself from the sun. She sees him greet a waitress who looks both surprised and delighted to see him, then he disappears from her line of sight.

Seth starts the car again.

“Where are we going?” she asks. She thought the truck stop was their last stop.

“Just ‘round the back.”

Behind the bar is a series of warehouses and buildings she doesn’t care to identify. Seth stops next to one and this time, he opens his door.

“Let’s go, Princess.”

It’s the first time he’d called her that since that night. Something clenches under her ribs, but she can’t tell if it’s a good or a bad thing. He grabs their bags from the trunk and walks to the building.

She follows him inside. People nod to him, call him “Jefe” and avoid her eyes. It makes her wonder what they know. How much they know. They pass by closed doors and storage spaces until they reach a corridor that looks just like any other they’ve walked past, except for the fact that there’s carpet on the floor.

“That’s our office,” Seth says with a nod to the first door on the right, but he keeps walking.

He stops in front of one of the last doors and opens it. It’s a bedroom, containing only the bare minimum: a bed, a nightstand, a table, a chair. There’s nothing on the walls, nothing on the nightstand. It’s even emptier than a motel room, which at least attempts to pretend it has an identity.

Seth dumps the bags on the table.

“This is my room,” he says as he takes out a gun from the bag and another from the back of his waistband and puts them down on the table. “You can stay here ‘til we set up your own.” He gestures to two doors she hadn’t noticed. “Bathroom and closet.”

She nods shakily, not wanting to ask if he’ll stay here with her. If he isn’t planning to, he might feel obligated and she doesn’t want to put more pressure on him, to be needy, like he has to babysit her. If he is planning on staying, he might take her asking as a way of pushing him away. He’ll be here or he won’t, and she’ll find out soon enough.

“Kate?”

She glances up. He’s looking at her, just a couple feet away, worry etched into his face. She wonders how long she spaced out. He approaches her carefully, slowly, like he would an injured wild animal. His hands hover near her face, leaving her plenty of time to back out, but she doesn’t and he touches her cheeks and his fingers are warm against her skin. She closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them again, he’s looking at her, open and earnest.

“Talk to me,” he says softly.

She wraps her hands around his wrists. For a second, she sees herself as Amaru, draining his soul from him, but then she blinks and he’s still here, alive and whole in front of her, waiting for her to speak.

“Are you—” she starts, then licks her chapped lips before trying again. “Are you clean?”

He swallows thickly but his gaze doesn’t waver when he answers. “Yeah. Yeah, Kate, I am.”

She releases his wrists and steps forward, until her arms are around his waist and her face is against his chest. 

“Good,” she says.

He wraps his arms around her, rests his chin on top of her head. “I’m sorry I made you go through that.”

There’s a lot of things she could say. _It’s okay_ except that it’s not, not really. _I forgive you_ but she already said that and it feels too formal, too heavy now.

“It’s in the past,” she chooses to say instead.

She feels him breathe deeply and she closes her eyes, his heart beating next to her ear.

“Do you wanna eat something?”

She shakes her head against him, content to just stand there. He’s the only thing that feels solid in her world right now. 

He offers to give her a tour of the facility, but the idea of being scrutinized by people—his people—makes her stomach churn.

“I’m gonna get some sleep,” she says as she steps away from him. She doesn’t meet his eyes when she moves past him to get to the bathroom. He would read her like an open book, would see what she truly is at the moment, the unmoored shadow of the girl she used to be. 

The room is empty when she comes out of the bathroom. Richie only got her one pair of sweatpants and she doesn’t feel like putting them on again to go to bed, so she just grabs a clean pair of underwear and one of her new tank tops and slips beneath the sheets. She hugs a pillow to her chest and closes her eyes.

She wasn’t expecting to fall asleep but she startles awake, phantom pain radiating through her limbs, gasping for air like she’s drowning. Amaru’s laughter echoes in her mind, red eyes and red hair flickering at the edge of her vision, taunting her, mocking her. She grasps her head and screws her eyes shut and forces herself to breathe and tries to remember the first movie Seth made her watch after they escaped the Twister. Maybe it was _The Magnificent Seven_ when he realized she had no idea who Steve McQueen was. Or was it _The Getaway_?

She can’t remember. Her hands are shaking.

She itches to do something, anything, to make it stop. She pushes the blankets off of her. She hisses when her feet touch the concrete floor, bare and cold against her skin. She stands up, a chill running down her spine. She doesn’t remember the nights being so cold when she was on the run with Seth. She wonders if Amaru has taken all of her warmth when she exited her body. 

She opens the closet and as expected it’s full of suits and dress shirts, but she spots some long sleeved shirts and even a hoodie. Seth Gecko in a hoodie, who would’ve thought? She takes it and puts it on. Even zipped up, it slips off one shoulder and the sleeves cover her hands entirely. At least it’s long enough to reach the tops of her thighs. She opens the door to the corridor and finds it empty and unlit, only a sliver of light escaping from a door all the way down. 

She pads silently towards it, vaguely remembers it being the door Seth described as his and Richie’s office. 

She pushes the door open. Seth is at one of the two desks and he doesn’t look up from the notebook he’s flipping through when she enters the room.

“I swear to fuck, Richard, I’m—” He stops when he glances up and his face softens. “Kate.”

“Hey,” she says. 

He closes the notebook. “That’s my hoodie.”

She looks down at herself and shrugs. “I was cold.”

He rubs a hand on the bottom half of his face, mutters something she doesn’t try to catch but sounds like someone needing to buy her some clothes. She sits on the couch with one leg folded underneath her.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

He glances down at his desk. “Reviewing our books. I need to know what the fuck happened when we were...away.”

He stands up and rounds the desk, coming to lean against it, closer to her. He grips the edge on each side of him, his head hanging over his chest. He looks tired. 

“Did you get some sleep?” he asks. 

She chews on her bottom lip, fiddles with the cuff of the sleeves. “A bit. I don’t know.” She shrugs.

“Nightmares?” he asks more softly.

She nods. “I can still hear her,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper. “I hear her laughing and I hear the screams of all the people I killed and—”

He closes the distance between them in a flash, kneeling in front of her, his hands flying to her face, forcing her to look at him in the eyes.

“Hey, no, stop. You didn’t kill them. She did. Not you.”

“It feels like it was me,” she says brokenly. Tears start burning at her eyes. “I don’t feel the difference, Seth. I was there and I saw everything. I felt everything.”

He sits next to her and draws her into his arm and against him, strokes her hair as she cries and trembles, repeats _It wasn’t you_ over and over until the words don’t make sense to her anymore.

“Do you want to go back to bed?” he asks against her forehead when she has calmed down.

She rearranges her legs until they are over his lap. His arms tighten around her and she traces his tattoo with her fingers. “Can we stay like this?”

“Yeah.”

  
  


She spends the next week alternating between trying to sleep, trying to eat and taste anything but blood and ash and cleaning any weapon she sees. It keeps her hands busy, keeps her fingers from shaking. She knows the motions, the rhythm of it. Dismantle, wipe, oil. Clothes appear in Seth’s closet and she doesn’t know who she’s supposed to thank, but they’re plain and neutral and soft and they fit and that’s all she cares about. There’s a gray hoodie in her size in the midst of the jeans and gray tank tops, but she keeps Seth’s. It’s softer. Warmer. It still smells like him. It’s still making her feel safe.

Every night, she goes to sleep alone and wakes up from nightmares and memories, and every night she seeks Seth out and tucks herself against him. In the morning, she wakes up in his empty bed, but his side is still warm. 

They never set up her own room.

After a week, she starts to really notice the glances the brothers throw her way. Sometimes it makes her feel like a ticking bomb, like they’re waiting for her to explode and melt down. Sometimes it feels like they’re expecting her to snap out of her sleepwalking existence. She knows they want her to get better. Truth is, she doesn’t know how much better she can get. She feels scooped out from the inside. She’s still cold. Amaru has left and scraped her body raw on her way out and she doesn’t know how to rebuild herself, how to fill the gaping void eating her inside.

They don’t say anything. 

But she feels it, even when they’re not watching her. There’s a tension in the air and she doesn’t know how to explain that they can’t just wait for her to be Kate again. She doesn’t know how. She isn’t her anymore.

She goes outside in the early hours and watches the sun rise over the desert. She’s usually the only one there, but sometimes Seth joins her and they sit in silence, the only two humans in their culebra operation. He tells her stories about growing up with Richie at Uncle Eddie’s house, stories he didn’t tell her when they were in Mexico, because Richie is in them and at the time the mere mention of his brother was enough to send him grasping for a needle. Sometimes the stories are about the successful jobs they pulled before they got caught and he went to prison. She doesn’t offer much in return. She doesn’t know how to talk about her life in Bethel. It doesn’t feel like it’s hers anymore. Rather it feels like something that happened to someone she used to know and lost contact with, the way someone would think about the family of a girl they used to be friends with in elementary school until one day that girl and her family moved away and that was the end of that friendship. The only thing that still feels somewhat real is her link to Scott, but she doesn’t know how to talk about Scott either, even though he’s alive somewhere in this world. 

Her silence doesn’t seem to faze Seth. He talks and sometimes they share a bottle of bourbon or tequila or rum and it tastes like fire to her, but at least it’s not blood and ash.

Two weeks after Matanzas, she walks into their office when they’re both there. They stop bickering immediately and turn to her, waiting for her to speak.

“I’m leaving,” she tells them in a steady, flat voice. 

They’re eerily still and silent for a fraction of second. She expects Seth to react, to protest, to wave his arms around as he shouts and demands an explanation only to dismiss it and curse. She expects his anger. But he doesn’t do anything. He just watches her, and Richie is the one getting to his feet with wide eyes.

“What do you mean you’re leaving?”

“I can’t stay here.”

He’s asking where she’s planning on going, telling her it’s not safe for her to be alone. He’s protesting but his voice never gets loud and she’d almost prefer it if it did. The entire time, Seth is watching her with his arms crossed in front of him, his face void of any expression. 

At first, she thinks he’s too stunned to react, but the more Richie protests and tries to convince her to stay, the more she sees that Seth is just resigned, like he was expecting something like this all along, like he was expecting the other shoe to drop and now that it did, he can relax and watch it happen and suffer in silence because he thinks he deserves it. For the first time in two weeks, she feels something other than dread and apathy. She wants to slap him, tell him to stop being a goddamn martyr. 

“I can’t stay,” she says, cutting Richie off.

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I don’t know who I am anymore and I can’t figure it out when I’m always surrounded by people who all expect me to be the person they remember. And I’m not her anymore.”

Richie seems to deflate.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

She shrugs a little. “I guess I should deal with what we left behind in Bethel.”

“You can have one of the cars,” he says with a vague gesture that she guesses means the abandoned cars in the parking lot, relics from Malvado’s time from what she pieced together. “Or maybe you want one of us to give you a ride?” he adds with a glance to Seth, who has still said nothing.

“Just a car is fine, Richie. Thanks.”

That evening, she goes outside to watch the sunset and Seth is already in their spot, a bottle with him. She sits on the dry grass next to him. He glances at her and offers the bottle wordlessly. 

“Are you mad?” she asks as she takes the bottle from him and takes a swig. Mezcal tonight. It still just tastes like fire. 

“Not at you,” he replies with his eyes on the horizon. 

She can take a guess then. Himself. Amaru. Carlos. Richie. The world at large. Any and all culebras. Himself again.

“It’s not your fault,” she says quietly. The mezcal burns down her throat.

He snorts dejectedly, picks at the dead grass around him. “This entire goddamn mess is my fault, Princess. I left you that night. And before that, I let you come with me when I should’ve put you on the first fucking bus back to Texas. We can even go back further if you want. I took you and your family hostage. If it wasn’t for me, y’all wouldn’t’ve been dragged into that fucking nightmare in the first place!” he finishes, tearing a handful of grass from the ground and throwing it away.

She doesn’t flinch from his outburst, not like she used to. It’s been a while since she was afraid of him. 

The sun paints the sky in fiery oranges and golds, burning low and crimson on the horizon. She takes another sip from the bottle and offers it to him.

“I know we live in a world where demons and vampires are real, but last I checked time travel ain’t,” she says calmly. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Seth turning away from the sunset to watch her.

“My fucking shitty choices ruined your life, Kate.”

She lets the last trembling rays of blood red sun burn into her retinas before looking at him. “I forgave you, Seth. It’s time for you to forgive yourself.”

He lets his head hang low over his chest. “Yeah.” He huffs a humorless laugh. “I’ll try.”

She leans against him. He’s swirling the alcohol in the bottle, his eyes on the ground, and she can almost hear the gears working in his head. She nudges him a little.

“What are you thinking?”

He gives her a blink and you miss it side glance and takes a swig. 

“I want to be selfish and ask you not to leave,” he confesses. “But I understand why you’re doing this. And I want—I want you to be okay. I took too much from you already and I have to let you go.”

She swallows thickly. “You let me walk through the gates of Hell, Seth.”

He presses his lips together and she can see the muscles in his jaw clench under his stubble. His voice is hoarse when he speaks again. “Yeah. I didn’t think I’d live for much longer after that.”

Her heart seizes painfully at his words. “I’m sorry.”

He straightens up and turns to her so quickly she almost loses her balance, but then his hands are on her face and his face inches away and his eyes are burning, intense and sad at the same time. “You have nothing to apologize for, Kate. Nothing.”

She nods, slightly stunned by his reaction. He presses his forehead against hers and closes his eyes. She breathes in deeply. She knows she has to leave and rebuild herself away from peoples’ gazes, that she needs to know who she is when she isn’t being perceived by anyone. She knows all of that, deep in her gut, and yet, as she’s breathing in sync with Seth, engulfed in his warmth and scent, she can’t help but wonder how she’s going to deal with being away from him.

“When do you leave?” he asks softly.

She backs away slowly and opens her eyes. He’s watching her and it might be the most vulnerable she’s ever seen him. “Tomorrow morning.”

That night, she doesn’t go to sleep alone and she doesn’t have to seek Seth out in his office when she inevitably wakes up from her nightmares. He slips in the bed behind her and holds her against his chest, strokes her back when she trembles in the aftermath of visions of blood and death and corpses.

He’s still in the bed when she wakes up in the morning, gets up when she does, even takes her two duffle bags to the car as the sun starts to rise. 

There’s a backpack waiting for her on the passenger seat.

“What’s this?”

Seth shrugs with one shoulder. “Richie’s idea of a farewell gift.”

She opens the bag. Inside are several stacks of dollar bills, a passport, a driver’s licence, a phone and its charger, as well as several bottles of soda and some snacks. She huffs a laugh at the image of Richie packing it for her.

Seth shoves a brown paper bag at her. She glances up from the backpack and raises an eyebrow.

“My idea of a farewell gift,” he says. 

She takes the bag and unrolls the top. She snorts when she sees the gun and boxes of ammo.

“You take care of yourself, alright?” he says.

She nods, not trusting herself not to cry if she opens her mouth.

“And if there’s anything, and I mean it okay? Anything. You call me—us.”

She nods again, then steps into his arms. He hugs her tightly, presses a kiss to her forehead. 

“Be safe,” he murmurs into her skin. 

She takes a step back, swallows back the tears. She gives him a shaky smile.

“You too, partner.”

Then she climbs into the driver’s seat and he closes the door behind her and leans into the window. He looks like he’s about to say something, but then he doesn’t, straightens up and steps away from the car. She tears her eyes away from him and forces herself to start the car.

She watches him become smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror as she drives away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Link to the moodboard tumblr post](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/637930508514361344/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-i-2-ive)


	3. Part II - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It seems like you and him were close.”  
> “We were. Are. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”  
> “Why not?”  
> “He helped me get away from... _her_. But I don’t know who I am anymore and when I was with him it was like he expected him to go back to being the girl I was before and I can’t be her again. Leaving was easier than disappointing him.”

It’s noon when she parks in front of her family’s house. The garden is overgrown, the mail is piling up in the mailbox. The bright sun makes the yellow paint look paler than it is. 

She doesn’t move from the car. She still remembers opening the door and finding blood. She sees the garden and she sees herself burying her friend, she sees Scott lunging at her in the rain, fangs out, half crazed. 

It’s not raining.

It’s the middle of the day.

But she can still feel the rain soaking her to the core, running away from her brother.

She swallows around the knot in her throat. There’s nowhere to go but forward.

She gets out of the car and feels her neighbors’ gazes on her. She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t search the curtained windows on the other side of the street for movement. She can barely keep herself together, she can’t spare energy and attention on other people.

Nothing has changed inside, like the house is just waiting for its owners to come back and go on with their lives. She walks through the rooms, pausing in front of her parents’ bedroom. She puts a shaky hand on the doorknob. She doesn’t go in.

She goes up to her room. It feels like walking into a stranger’s. She sees the pictures on the wall, the wooden cross above her bed, the trophies, the posters. She’s in the bedroom of a seventeen years old girl who has a crush on a boy from Sunday school. She’s looking at the life of a kid who died when her mother killed herself, when her father packed her and her brother up in an RV, when a man who looked like a Bible’s salesman approached her at a motel pool, when a professional thief pulled her against his chest and shot at police officers, when they stepped into an ancient blood temple disguised as a stripper bar, when she learned that demons were real and walking the Earth, when she had to push a stake through her father’s heart, when she ran across Mexico with a heroin addict, when she found her brother standing next to her friend’s corpse, when two bullets found their home in her chest, when Amaru took control, when she had to witness the murder of countless innocent people at her hands, when Amaru sliced her wrists, when she walked into Hell. 

There’s nothing left of that kid. 

She sees a photograph of the four of them, a memory from a Fourth of July barbecue. They’re all laughing at something. She can’t remember what it was. The girl smiling back at her is the perfect picture of innocence.

She rolls her shoulders back and pops her neck. 

There’s nothing for her here. She doesn’t know what she was expecting. Recognition? Relief? She feels none of that. She’s a stranger in the house of a family that was struck by tragedy. 

She puts one of her duffle bags on the dresser and grabs some socks, underwear, plain t shirts and a pair of jeans. She takes one look at the blouses, the church appropriate dresses and skirts and pushes them away. 

She gives one last glance at the bedroom and closes the door behind her. She doesn’t check Scott’s room. 

She sits heavily on the couch and takes out her cell phone. She texts Scott, tells him she’s in Bethel, asks him if he wants to do anything with the house. The answer is quick and brief.

_Already took what I wanted. Do what you want._

It takes her three days. The charity shop trucks come and take what they want. She pulls anything that can be reused in the yard with a sign saying “FREE” and she throws everything else in the trash. 

She sleeps fitfully on the couch and once the house is empty, she drives away. 

She stops at a motel just outside of Houston, collapses on the bed and pretends it doesn’t feel too big and empty without someone else at her back. 

The next day she counts the money Richie gave her. Without any big spending, it can last her for months. 

She drives to Galveston two days later. She digs her feet in the sand, lets the salt of the ocean coat her hair and skin. She swims every day and her skin turns golden. She works out in her motel room and she remembers Seth doing push ups and crunches in Mexico. She pushes herself to the brink of exhaustion every day and every night she collapses in her cold bed and drifts off. She doesn’t dream. Or rather, she doesn’t remember her dreams. She always wakes up at dawn, a vague sense of terror gripping her ribs, and every day she chooses to ignore it.

Food still tastes like ash and blood and she has to remind herself to eat. She avoids her reflection in the bathroom mirror, but when she catches it, she barely recognizes the face of the person looking at her. Her cheeks have lost the last of their juvenile fat. Her cheekbones are sharp and high, her eyes appearing bigger than before. 

After a month, she goes back to Houston.

A month later, she gets a job bussing tables. She gives a fake name and they pay her in cash.

A month after that, she finds a tiny apartment downtown. 

She’s still no closer to figure out who she is, but at least she doesn’t have to navigate between people’s (Seth, Richie, Scott, any person or culebra present at Jed’s) worried glances. 

There’s a Seth shaped hole in her chest that she pretends isn’t there. She hasn’t made any progress yet. She can’t go back. 

Two months later, she checks her bank account and there’s more money on it than she’s ever had in her life. When she searches through the operations, she sees large transfers from Scott, regular like clockwork. He never mentioned it the few times they talked on the phone. 

“Hey, Kate. What’s up?” he greets when she calls him.

“You mind telling me why you’ve been sending me that much money? And how you got it?”

“Oh. You finally noticed.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Kate—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Scott. There’s no way you make that much money with your band.”

He makes a noise of protest on the other side. “Hey! We could!”

She sighs. “Scott.”

“Okay, we’re not.”

She sits heavily at the rickety table in the closet that passes as her kitchen. “Where’s the money from?”

She hears him hesitate. “Richie,” he finally answers. 

She rubs her forehead. “What did you do?” she asks wearily.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Scott. There’s almost half a mil in my account, don’t tell me you didn’t do anything to get it.”

“Kate, I swear. I haven’t done anything. He called me a couple months ago, asking if I was in contact with you and if he could send me money to transfer to you.”

She longs for a bottle of bottom shelf tequila. Too bad this isn’t Mexico, where it matters less that she’s still under twenty one.

“Why didn’t he send it directly to me?”

“I think he’s under the impression you want nothing to do with him. Or his brother,” he adds after a beat.

She sighs again. She knew she should’ve contacted them months ago. But at the time, she didn’t know what to say. She still doesn’t know what she would say. _I’m still fucked up. I can’t come back. I don’t want to burden you_.

“Why send money at all?” she says, more for herself than Scott.

“I don’t know, Kate,” he still says. “Maybe they just want to make sure you can have a normal life? Does it really matter?”

She snorts and leans forward, her elbows resting on her knees. She rubs at her face. A normal life. What a goddamn joke. “No,” she mutters. “I guess it doesn’t.”

Scott doesn’t say anything for a while, but the call doesn’t disconnect. 

“Kate?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you should—I don’t know. Maybe you should talk to someone.”

She frowns, even though he isn’t here to see it. “What do you mean?”

“A shrink.”

She barks out a laugh. “How the hell am I supposed to do that, Scott? I can’t really talk about vampire-snakes or demons or the goddamn queen of hell if I don’t want to be committed you know, _again_ , can I?”

“Maybe you could spin the truth in a way that doesn’t include the supernatural.”

“Scott—”

“I don’t want to lose you, Kate. Not like Mom.”

Whatever she was about to say freezes in her throat. She tries not to think about her mother, who should’ve gotten help, real, medical help, not some bullshit promises to an invisible force. 

“I’m not relying on prayers to get better, Scott,” she says softly.

“No,” he replies and she can hear the bitterness in his voice. “You’re not relying on anything. And that’s the problem.”

It takes her two weeks to finally decide to find a therapist. Then another to figure out how to talk about her life.

She has a hard time looking at her psychologist in the eyes and the words often get stuck in her mouth and she has to remember to say cartel members instead of culebras and she carefully avoids the fact that she took two bullets in the gut and somehow her being possessed by Amaru becomes a classic case of an abusive relationship. 

She hesitates a long time before saying Seth or Richie’s names. But she figures that as long as she isn’t mentioning any of their criminal activities, it’ll be fine.

“I have panic attacks.”

“That’s very common. How long have you had them?”

“Since...I guess since the c—cartel shooting.”

“What do you usually do when that happens?”

“Depends. At first, Seth was here and he would just. Sit. Next to me. And make me remember how to breathe.”

“And now?”

“I use some stuff he taught me. Called it grounding techniques. His uncle taught him when he was a kid.”

“He also has panic attacks?”

“Used to.”

“So what are these grounding techniques he taught you?”

“I make lists. In my mind.”

“What kind of lists?”

“Towns we drove to in Mexico.”

“When you were running from the cartel members?”

“Yes. I try to remember them in chronological order.”

“What else do you make lists of?”

“Movies he made me watch.”

“Did you watch a lot of them?”

“Yeah. He said I had no cinematographic culture and that it was a crime.”

“It seems like you and him were close.”

“We were. Are. I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

“Why not?”

“He helped me get away from... _her._ But I don’t know who I am anymore and when I was with him it was like he expected me to go back to being the girl I was before and I can’t be her again. Leaving was easier than disappointing him.”

“I have this feeling sometimes, like something terrible is going to happen.”

“It’s called hypervigilance. It’s very common in people suffering from anxiety and PTSD.”

“I feel like I need to always be ready to fight. Or run away.”

“Some people find it helpful to take up running.”

“So the next time I feel like that I should just put on my sneakers and go to the park?”

“If you think it’ll help, yes.”

“And if I want to fight more than I want to run?”

“I can give you the address of a good boxing club.”

“Have you had nightmares lately?”

“Less.”

“Panic attacks?”

“The same.”

“What did you do to ground yourself?”

“A mental list of all the Paul Newman movies I watched with Seth.”

“Have you contacted him?”

“...”

“Kate?”

“It’s been over half a year.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know what I would tell him. How do I explain the radio silence?”

“From what you told me about him, he might not hold it against you.”

“I feel like it’s too late.”

“As long as you’re both alive, it’s never too late.”

“I’ve been going to the boxing club.”

“Does it help?”

“I think it does.”

“It’s my twentieth birthday today.”

“Happy birthday. Have you planned anything?”

“My brother is visiting me.”

“You seem nervous.”

“I haven’t seen him in awhile. I think—I think I’m afraid he isn’t going to recognize me.”

“Why not?”

“Sometimes I don’t recognize myself. Most of the time. I still don’t know who I am.”

“Start small.”

“What do you mean?”

“What is something you are and that isn’t going to change, no matter what?”

“...I am Scott’s sister.”

“Very good. I want you to come back next time with one other thing that you are. And Kate?”

“Yes?”

“Enjoy your birthday.”

“I’m a survivor.”

“I’m a fighter.”

“I’m a good shot.”

“I’m my parents’ daughter.”

  
  


Not everything is solved.

She still spends long nights sitting on her windowsill or on her kitchen floor, sometimes with cigarettes, sometimes with a bottle of hard liquor, pulling the sleeves of Seth’s hoodie over her hands, pretending she can still smell him on the fabric, hiding the scars on her wrists.

Her thumb hovers over his name on her phone but she still doesn’t call. 

Come morning, she goes for a run and she goes to the gym and she lets out all of her frustrations against a punching bag or sometimes at the shooting range and she disassembles and cleans and reassembles her gun the way Seth taught her until she’s done it so often she could do it in her sleep.

Four months after starting therapy, she pushes open the door to a tattoo shop open late at night. The man behind the counter raises an eyebrow like he’s going to ask if she’s over eighteen, but she strolls up to him and, ignoring the way her heart hammers in her chest, she pushes her sleeves up and shows him the scars.

“Hi. Can these be covered?”

The man recoils a bit but his eyes drop from her face to her wrists. She tries not to squirm under the scrutiny, tries to pretend she doesn’t care about what he must be thinking. 

“Sure. This one is a bit raised,” he says gesturing at her right arm, “but nothing I can’t deal with. Might hurt like a bitch, tho.” She shrugs, because pain really doesn’t matter anymore. “Alright then. Any idea what you want to get?”

Four hours later, she exits the shop with a snake wrapped around her left wrist, and a simple black cross on her right one. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t believe anymore. It used to be a part of her. Her cross pendant used to be her connection to her mother. She used to be part of that world, full of light and faith and hope. Now she knows better. The world is filled with darkness and gods are bloodthirsty bastards.

The first time she encounters a culebra since leaving Jed’s, she’s going back to her apartment after a late night shift. The man steps out of an alleyway in front of her and alarm bells blare in her mind.

“If this isn’t the former Queen of Hell,” the man says.

“I was never her. She was possessing me,” she corrects flatly, knowing it’s useless already.

“Drinking you is gonna be fucking great.”

She rolls her eyes. “You can fucking try.”

He lunges at her and she drops to the ground, extending a leg and tripping him. He falls on his back and she immediately straddles him, pinning his arms to his side with her knees as she grabs the stake she keeps in the back of her waistband and aims it at his heart.

The culebra’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, okay!” he shouts. “I wasn’t going to kill you, I just wanted to eat a little!”

“I’m not on the fucking menu.”

She doesn’t kill him but she promises that if she ever hears about any suspicious deaths in the area, she’ll find him and end him.

She starts paying more attention after that.

She has to kill for the first time a month later. The culebra doesn’t leave her a choice and she doesn’t hesitate when she drives the stake in his chest. Her hands don’t shake and she isn’t woken up by nightmares that night.

Rogue culebras seem to multiply afterward.

She quits her job and the next time she sees her therapist she announces that she’s leaving town.

“Are you going back to your friends’?” 

“I don’t know for sure. Maybe.”

“You have made tremendous progress, Kate. I’m sure they’ll welcome you with open arms, if you let them.”

She leaves Houston but she doesn’t go to Jed’s. She hops from motel to motel and yet somehow, rabid culebras always seem to find her. She wonders if there’s a bounty on her head.

She’s coming back to her motel room near Odessa, two weeks after leaving Houston, and someone is waiting for her inside. Except this time, it’s not someone who wants to kill her.

“Kisa,” she says, lowering her gun when she recognizes the woman sitting in the armchair next to her bed.

“Kate. You look good.”

She crosses her arms. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Rogue culebras are hunting you.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Any idea why?”

Kisa shrugs. “They want to bring back Amaru. Some believe there’s still a connection between you and her.”

There’s not, not anymore, and that is one of the few things she can be sure of, after making her way through the gate and into hell. Kisa herself said so, before they parted ways in Matanzas.

“Fucking fantastic.”

“Do you want to join me?”

“Doing what?”

“Hunting them.”

She squints at Kisa, searching for the catch. It can’t just be that simple. She puts her gun down on the table, drops her backpack on the floor and grabs the bottle of tequila from the mini fridge. She takes a swig directly from the bottle and doesn’t offer to pour a glass for Kisa.

“Do they know?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Seth and Richie.”

Kisa snorts. “About the culebras still loyal to Amaru? Yes.”

“And about you recruiting me?”

Kisa raises an eyebrow and smirks. “You really think I would be here if they knew? They’ve got themselves convinced that you’re living your best apple pie life, far away from ancient demons and stakes.”

She rolls her eyes and knocks back another mouthful of tequila. “Yeah, like that could ever happen.”

Kisa stands up from the armchair and walks to her. “Listen. We don’t owe each other anything. But I know what it’s like to lose control of your life. And I know those culebras are not going to stop. They’re going to keep coming after you, whether you want it or not, and you’re going to have to fight them. We could help each other out.”

“Are you still in contact with them?”

“Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum? Yes, sometimes.”

“And we’re not gonna run into them?”

“I’d prefer not to have Seth attempt to murder me. So no. We have a deal. They’re in charge of anything south of Houston. We stick to the rest. Why are you so intent on avoiding them, though?”

She glares at her but doesn’t answer. Kisa doesn’t need to know her reasons. She doesn’t need to know that she _wants_ them to keep thinking she’s back to a normal life, that she isn’t fucked up beyond measure, so that their (Seth’s) guilt and self loathing rolling out in waves from them (Seth) can be appeased. If they see her, wielding an axe in one hand and a gun in the other, stakes strapped to her thigh, covered in culebra blood, they will think they’ve failed her, again.

She takes her gun and starts disassembling it.

“When do we leave?” she asks.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> You can find this chapter's moodboard on my [tumblr](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/638208839579205632/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-ii-1-it).


	4. Part II - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “How do you feel, kid?”  
> She can’t even roll her eyes but she gives him her best attempt. “Like shit.”  
> He snorts. “Yeah. You look like it too.”  
> “Fuck off.” She closes her eyes. She coughs and tastes blood in her mouth. “Did you kill him?”  
> “Damn right I did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays i hope everyone had a good time! and if you haven't, well, welcome to the club, here's a new chapter that i'll hope will make things a bit better.
> 
> today you're meeting three original characters: diego, dorian and miguel.  
> please imagine diego as clayton cardenas in mayans mc, dorian as bearded tom hardy and miguel as richard cabral in mayans mc. (there's a moodboard at the end of the chapter with their faces)  
> you're welcome x)

It feels good to be running toward something and not away from something for once. It’s the same feeling she had when she was in Matanzas, fighting side by side with Seth after telling him she had to fight back, had to regain control, even though he was looking at her like he wanted to swaddle her in bubble wrap and send her as far away from Amaru as possible.

Kisa’s base of operation looks much like the Gecko’s but instead of a bar, it’s a training ground, complete with a gym, sparring ring, shooting range for everything from crossbow to shotgun and even an obstacle course.

“Did you just take over a military base?” she asks when Kisa gives her a tour on her first day there.

“Well, if you’re going to war, you’ve got to be prepared.”

Kisa takes her to her room next, and it’s more a glorified monk cell than anything else but she doesn’t care. She isn’t here to make a home. She’s here to fight back and make sure what happened to her family doesn’t happen to anyone else, and do everything she can so Amaru stays where she fucking belongs.

“We have a training session at 7. I’ll introduce you to everyone then.”

The first week, she goes to sleep every morning exhausted and bruised black and blue. Turns out, she’s the only human in the operation, but keeping the same hours as the rest of them is just easier. So she watches the sunrise and goes to sleep and when she wakes up, she drinks her coffee watching the sunset over the desert. It’s not that big of a change. The neon lights inside the base keep the inside of it timeless and all they do is plan, research, train.

Kisa sends her in the field eight days after she arrives. 

They’re a team of four: her and three men who look like they just escaped a Harley Davidson convention. She has sparred with one of them, Diego, quite a bit. He looks like he could be around forty, but she knows he was turned at least sixty years ago. He rarely talks, more of a silent muscle type than anything, but she finds herself trusting him easily. She knows how he fights, knows he doesn’t see her as just Kisa’s latest recruit, or Amaru’s former host, or just a weak human to protect. He sees her as a fellow soldier and that’s enough for her.

She hasn’t spent that much time with the other two, but Kisa has introduced them as Dorian and Miguel, two of her best men for field work, so she gets in the truck with them and they drive to San Angelo and take out a nest of culebras with a penchant for gruesome blood sacrifices. She takes one look at the painting of Amaru behind their altar and sets it on fire.

Diego gives her a nod over the piles of ashes between them and Miguel throws her a pack of baby wipes when they’re back in the truck so she can scrub the dried blood off of her face. 

They report back to the base and Kisa seems pleased and the next time there’s some cleaning up to do, she sends the four of them to it.

“That blond one almost had you,” Miguel comments when they’re getting back to the truck after a job.

“Key word being almost,” she replies and her split lip doesn’t keep her from grinning.

“Let’s work on that when we’re back.”

“On what?”

“You sparring with someone as small as you.”

She rolls her eyes as she gets into the truck.

“Miguel has a point,” Dorian pipes up and turns the key in the ignition. “You know how to use your size to your advantage against big guys like him,” he says with a finger pointed to the passenger seat where Diego is inspecting his knife. “But when your enemy matches you in dexterity and speed, it’s another story.”

“Fine,” she says. “We’ll deal with that then.”

“How’s the lip?” Miguel asks. 

“It’ll heal.”

He looks like he’s thinking of grabbing the first aid kit they keep in the truck just for her but she glares at him before he can go full mother hen on her.

They’re dealing with a nest south of Amarillo the first time she gets really, seriously, hurt. She’s searching the upper level of a warehouse, looking for any kind of paperwork, intel, anything to point them toward another nest or give them an idea of what the rogues are planning while the guys take out the actual nest downstairs. 

She has her gun in one hand and her blade in the other, clearing one room after another. She’s being careful, she’s done it dozens of times. And yet, she’s still surprised by the culebra who lunges at her from the shadows. She slashes at him but his claws get her in the arm and her gun clatters away from her. She ducks away and grabs the gun she keeps in her boot and shoots. She’s an excellent shot, but this culebra’s particular ability seems to be his speed because the fucker moves faster than her bullets and it pisses her off. This ain’t the Matrix but apparently he didn’t get the memo. He dodges her shots and swings at her, his fist connects with her jaw and the strength of it sends her flying across the room. She blinks, trying to clear the black spots dancing in front of her, and smirks. Her first gun is under the table she was just thrown into. She grabs it and turns around in one fluid movement and shoots the culebra advancing on her in the throat, the eye and the chest. But not his heart. 

She jumps to her feet, forcing herself to stay upright and move away despite the dizziness. She manages to keep the culebra at bay but the fight takes them out of the room and on the catwalk overlooking the rest of the warehouse. 

She hears Miguel shout her name but she can’t look down, not when she has to focus so hard on not letting the culebra get the upper hand on her. She loses her knife at some point and she’s bleeding from her forehead and she has pumped the asshole full of lead and broken his nose, but he’s still standing and her guns are empty. She’s wielding a stake and she wishes she had taken up sword fighting like her brother or that she had some residual muscle memory of the training Amaru made her body go through with Brasa, something useful instead of all the nightmarish visions and crushing guilt.

She doesn’t know if it’s the concussion or the blood loss or both, but she stumbles and the culebra pounces with his fangs out. A second later, she’s falling from the catwalk and crashing hard on a crate below. She sees a blur of movements but staying conscious is too hard and not worth it when her entire body is screaming in pain.

When she regains consciousness, she’s lying down and her head is pillowed on something uneven and there’s angry voices shouting over the rumbling of an engine and her head is thumping like it’s stuck in the bass drum from Scott’s band. Even breathing hurts. Actually, breathing hurts more than anything else.

“Shhh,” comes a deep voice above her.

She has to make a conscious effort to open her eyes and when she does she feels like she’s being stabbed in the temples, but at least she recognizes where she is. Lying down on the backseat of the truck, her head on Diego’s lap, Miguel and Dorian bickering in the front. She exhales shakily. Her team is safe. 

“Don’t try to move,” Diego says. “You have broken ribs.”

Miguel and Dorian shut up. Dorian turns around in his seat to look at her.

“How do you feel, kid?”

She can’t even roll her eyes but she gives him her best attempt. “Like shit.”

He snorts. “Yeah. You look like it too.”

“Fuck off.” She closes her eyes. She coughs and tastes blood in her mouth. “Did you kill him?”

“Damn right I did,” Miguel mutters. 

They get back to the base and Kisa immediately yells at the boys when she sees her condition, but then she calls the doctor they do business with and orders them to take her to her room.

Diego carries her, Miguel and Dorian trailing behind him.

“Here,” Dorian says as he deposits something on her desk. She can’t see what it is from where she’s lying on her bed and because Diego’s strong hand keeps her from trying to sit up before she fucks her ribs up even more.

“What is it?” she asks.

“Your gun,” Dorian answers as he holds it out to her.

She gives him a tiny relieved smile. This particular gun is the one Seth gave her before she left. She feels stupid about being sentimental over that of all things, but she’s still glad she didn’t lose it entirely.

Doc arrives and examines her and Dorian and Miguel leave to give Kisa her report but Diego stays and listens to what Doc is saying closely. Miguel isn’t the only one with mother hen tendencies.

“Absolutely no hunting, sparring or strenuous physical activities for two months,” Doc says once he’s done poking at her bruises. 

She groans. “What the hell am I supposed to do for two months?”

“Start a book club,” Doc deadpans. “I need to stitch your head.”

She doesn’t flinch much anymore when getting stitches. The first time she needed some, Kisa gave her a bottle of tequila, Miguel held her down and she tried not to think of the needle Dorian was pushing through her skin. Turns out Dorian is a lousy seamstress and now she’s sporting a very ugly scar above her left elbow.

After that, Kisa tried her hand, and while she is better than Dorian—which isn’t that hard, the bar is low—she isn’t that much better. Now she has a thick white line with six puckered dots around it just under her collarbone.

“It looks kinda badass,” Miguel had commented during one of their sparring sessions. “‘M gonna start calling you Xena Warrior Princess.”

She had glared at him while avoiding a kick to the stomach. 

“No, you ain’t,” she had replied, pivoting on the ball of her feet and punching him in the jaw.

“Good one. Why not?”

“I ain’t nobody's princess.”

The third time, they called Doc because the gash was eight inches long in the middle of her back and they needed antibiotics. Doc has done all of her stitches since then, except for that one time when they were four hours away from the compound and her thigh had been bleeding and she had stitched it herself in the back of the truck, Dorian protesting the entire time that she should let one of them do it. He had only shut up when she had threatened to stab him in the eye with her needle.

Doc stitches the gash at her hairline and leaves after giving her a bottle of painkillers and a stern look to stay put. 

Miguel and Dorian come back into her room a second after Doc cleared it, like they were waiting at her door. Knowing them, they probably were.

“So?”

“I’m benched for two months.”

“You sure you don’t wanna be turned? ‘Cause that shit would be healed in five seconds, tops.”

She swallows the bile rising in her throat at his words. She knows Dorian is joking. He can’t know what the thought of being turned brings to her mind, lying down on top of the bloodwell, hate consuming her heart and mind as Scott and Richie lean over her looking heartbroken like they have the right to, like it’s not _their fucking fault_ she’s dying in the first place, cursing them through gasps and tears, desperatly hoping they’ll listen to her and won’t make her one of them, not when Seth turned to artificial oblivion to forget his own brother was one, not when her own father made her kill him so he wouldn’t become one. 

She clenches her jaw but aims for a teasing tone.

“Dorian, I might have three broken ribs but if you come near me with your fangs I will castrate you.” 

“Fair enough. What can we do?”

She sighs and ignores the pain shooting through her chest. She wants nothing more than to sleep for three days, but she’s also acutely aware of the blood matted in her hair, the grime covering her skin, the ash and dirt caked under her nails. 

“I need a shower.” 

They help her to her feet and she grits her teeth as they walk to the common bathroom, Miguel and Diego supporting her on each side, Dorian behind them with her towel and a change of clothes.

“Should we go get Kisa?” Miguel asks when they’re in front of a shower stall and it becomes obvious she’s going to need help removing her clothes. 

She eyes them. Three fighters, three culebras who wouldn’t stand out from the Hells Angels, each of them more than a hundred years old, used to blood and gore, and every single one of them is avoiding her eyes and looking like they’d prefer be staked through the heart rather than having to undress her.

“I’m sure Kisa has better things to do than helping me shower,” she states flatly. 

“Uh, yeah, but, uh, we don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Miguel mumbles into his beard.

“You look more uncomfortable than me, _cabrón_ ,” she smirks. 

“No one wants to see their sister naked,” Dorian says, still avoiding her eyes. 

“Guys. I’m tired, I’m in pain, I want to go the fuck to sleep and I need a fucking shower. So grow a pair and help me.”

She’s starting to reconsider her stance on never being turned after one restless week. She takes walks outside of the compound during the day, one of the guys always keeping an eye on her from the shadows. She cleans everyone’s weapons. She helps analyse and compile the intel they get, delves into research to see if they can predict the rogue culebras’ next move.

She’s keeping busy but it’s not enough to appease her anxiety or her boredom. She wants to run and she wants to fight. 

Two weeks into her forced rest, she has her first panic attack in months. She lists Paul Newman’s movies she watched with Seth, then Steve McQueen’s, then Sergio Leone’s. It doesn’t work.

Kisa finds her in one of the common rooms, watching _My Name is Nobody_ with red puffy eyes and a half empty bottle of bourbon dangling from her hand.

They don’t talk about it. Kisa just slides on the couch behind her and pulls her carefully against her chest. They watch the movie together and she falls asleep but when she wakes up she’s in her room and there’s a bottle of water and some aspirin on her desk.

She absolutely hates it when Kisa sends Diego, Miguel and Dorian on jobs without her. Rationally, she knows that they were fighting together long before she was even born, but there’s always a twist in her gut when they’re not here, when she doesn’t have eyes on them and she knows they’re in dangerous situations. 

They come back after an entire week away from the base and that evening, she wakes up in her bed to three grown men piled up around her like a bunch of puppies. Her head is pillowed on Miguel’s stomach, there’s a solid block of muscles at her back that she guesses is Diego and there’s a weight across her legs that reveals itself to be Dorian when she lifts her head enough to see what the hell is going on down there. She snorts to herself and one of them groans in his sleep and she decides to stay in bed for a while longer.

Her phone buzzes with a message a couple of hours later.

It’s from Kisa, a picture of the four of them on her bed all tangled up in each other. She looks tiny amongst the bikers, but there’s also a sort of reverence there, like they molded themselves around her sleeping form to protect her from all sides.

She still yells at them for leaving blood on her pillow.

She celebrates her twenty first birthday by sparring for the first time since breaking her ribs. She’s breathing hard, her stamina shot to death after two months, but she’s grinning as Miguel and Dorian advance on her. They let her kick their asses and she’s not even mad they went soft on her.

She drives to Austin the next day to see Scott’s band’s next show. She’s still not a fan of their music, but she hasn’t seen her brother in a year, and it’s better to meet him there than having him come to the compound and freak out when he realizes what she’s been up to for the last eight months. 

After their set is finished, Scott finds her at the bar and immediately frowns when he sees Diego next to her.

“Who’s the Hells Angels reject?”

She rolls her eyes. “Scott, this is Diego. Diego, meet Scott, my very rude little brother.”

Diego gives him a nod and drinks his beer. Scott squints.

“Did you have to get a boyfriend even older than Seth?” he asks with a smirk and she cuffs the back of his head. Next to her, Diego is quietly chuckling into his glass.

“One,” she starts with a glare. “Diego isn’t my boyfriend, he’s one of my teammates. Two, I was never with Seth.”

Scott raises a mocking eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Does he know that?”

She gives him a flat look. “I will kill you in your sleep, Scott.”

Scott barks out a laugh and hugs her. “Happy birthday, Kate. I missed you.”

She ruffles his hair the way he hates it and avoids the hand that tries to slap hers away. “I missed you too, jerk.”

She orders a round of shots and they settle at a table away from the stage where the next band is warming up.

“So,” Scott starts after swallowing his shot. “You said teammate.” He looks between her and Diego with a clear question in his eyes. “What’s that about?”

She takes her shot and sighs. And here she was hoping that this particular discussion could be pushed away for when they’re all drunk. 

“You heard of the rogue culebras?” she asks. 

Scott stares at her, still for a fraction of seconds, then groans, so that must have been enough. “Really, Kate? Last time I saw you you had a normal life in Houston and now you’re what? Buffy The Rogue Culebra Killer?”

“I wasn’t exactly planning on it. Those assholes want my body to try and bring back Amaru. I didn’t really have a choice when they started hunting me.”

“So now you’re hunting them?”

She shrugs. “Not just me. Kisa—”

“You’re part of Kisa’s group,” he interrupts. “Of course you are.”

He stands up and goes to the bar. Diego glances at her.

“He’s taking it better than I thought he would,” she says and he snorts. 

Scott comes back with three glasses and a bottle of whisky. 

“You know, when they find out, they’re gonna freak the fuck out,” he tells her as he pours and slides glasses to her and Diego. He doesn’t need to say who _they_ are.

“Yeah, well, Seth and Richie are not gonna find out and even if they do, I’m my own fucking person.”

Scott shakes his head. “Here’s to hoping.” He drains his glass then looks at Diego. “So you’re my sister’s new protector, then?”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be a dick, Scott.”

“I’m not! I wanna know about your new life!”

She exchanges a look with Diego, who raises an eyebrow at her. She nods. 

“Not protector,” Diego says in his deep, hoarse voice. “Teammate.”

Scott seems impressed when she tells him about the team and some of the jobs they’ve pulled. He looks pissed when she tells him about breaking her ribs, but he does ask to see her scars. He whistles at the one on her back. 

“I hate that you have them but I gotta say it looks fucking badass.”

At the end of the night, he shakes Diego’s hand, and tells her to be careful.

“I will,” she says as he hugs her. “And Scott?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you still in contact with Seth and Richie?”

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“How are they doing?”

He shrugs. “Fine, from what I can tell. Seth is still the biggest asshole on this side of the planet but that’s nothing new.”

She smiles. “Don’t tell them about me, okay?”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah, no shit. I like my head attached to my body, thanks.”

She gets back to training and sparring intensely and every time someone tries to suggest that she might want to take it easy, she challenges them to a fight and knocks them down to the floor. 

Kisa jokes about making people pay to watch those fights and Miguel asks if he can be the MC. She doesn’t laugh with the rest of them, remembering all too clearly Kisa’s former fight club and the woman she—no, not her, _Amaru_ —killed there.

It’s just past midnight and they’re having lunch in the common room when Kisa barges in, talking angrily on the phone in Spanish, and it’s a common enough occurrence that no one pays it attention, at least until they hear her say, “El Paso is in our territory,” which means the person on the line is from the Geckos’ operation.

They stop eating and watch as Kisa moves around the room like she’s looking for something until she finds a manilla folder strewn carelessly on one of the couches. 

“Yes, I’m aware you need back up,” Kisa is saying on the phone. “But our number of available operational teams is stretched thin at the moment. We lost Lazlo last week and Youmna’s arm is still growing back.”

Next to her, Dorian leans back on the chair and crosses his arms, like he’s waiting for Kisa to notice them and realize they’re currently here and very available. Kisa gives him a look and ignores him.

“Put Richard on the phone,” she orders dryly.

Kisa flips through the folder, stopping to read some parts then going back to previous pages like she’s checking and comparing things.

“You know it’s a trap, don’t you,” she says in English after a few seconds of silence. She rolls her eyes at whatever Richie just said, glances at them at the table before going back to the folder. Going by how she pinches the bridge of her nose and mutters in Spanish, whatever Richie has just said isn’t pleasing her. She straightens up, tosses her hair back and puts the phone on speaker while she pours herself a drink.

“—know it’s not ideal,” Richie is saying on the phone. “And I know we decided to keep to our territories but it’s not like I planned for them to take him to fucking El Paso!”

Kisa swallows her bourbon. 

“C’mon Kisa. You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t an emergency. I can’t take them all with just my team. We’re too small.”

“Why don’t you call the Ranger?”

“They’re visiting Margaret’s family in New Mexico. And even with him we would be outnumbered.”

Kisa sighs then looks at them. They’re all watching her, waiting to know what the hell this is all about. 

“Listen, they’re fucking delusional,” Richie starts again. “They’ve been calling me, telling me to bring her to them, like she’s still with us.”

Something freezes in her chest.

“Bring who?” Kisa asks even though her eyes are already on her, even though they all know what this is about.

“Kate,” Richie unknowingly confirms for them. “They want me to bring them Kate. They’re saying they know she’s fighting with us and that if we don’t bring her, they’ll kill him. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell them that Kate’s been out for nearly two years. They don’t believe me. They’re gonna kill Seth, Kisa.”

She feels more than she sees the boys turn to her. She’s staring at the phone, Richie’s words echoing in her mind. She raises her eyes to meet Kisa’s and she nods. Kisa’s eyes widen but she gives her a hard stare and mouths _We’re doing it._ She starts opening her mouth, ready to tell Richie herself that they’re going to take care of it.

“I have a team I can send you,” Kisa says. “They’re my best fighters so I want them back in one piece, you hear me?”

“Thank you.”

“Send me the details.”

Kisa disconnects the call. They all stay silent, waiting to see who’s going to say what everyone is thinking.

“So. We’re walking into a trap?” Miguel finally says idly, like he’s asking whose turn it is to do the dishes.

“Are you sure about this?” Kisa asks her. “They’re not going to be happy.”

She shrugs. “They can bitch about it once we’ve saved Seth’s ass.”

Kisa observes her for a few seconds. “I’m coming with you.”

“Kisa, we can deal with it on our own.”

“Oh it’s not for you. I wanna see their faces when they see what you’ve been doing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> link to tumblr post with moodboards [here](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/638562175358812160/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-ii-2-how-do)


	5. Part II - 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She watches him take in her shoulder holsters and the guns tucked in them, the stakes strapped to her thighs, the knife at her hip. His eyes linger on the scar near her hairline. Then they turn to Diego, Dorian and Miguel, how they’re standing close to her, and she knows he sees them for who they are. A team. A crew of fighters. Soldiers.  
> “You were out,” he says, dumbfounded.  
> “I was,” she nods. “But then I started getting chased by the rogues. There was no other choice.”  
> “Fuck.”  
> She shrugs. “We can talk about this once we’ve rescued Seth.”  
> He scoffs. “Oh, he’s gonna hate this.”  
> “Tough shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have noticed that the total number of chapters went up. that's because i'm still very much not good at estimating how long it takes me to make those idiots do anything.

They drive to the outskirts of El Paso, her, Miguel, Dorian and Diego in their truck, Kisa and another team who came back sooner than expected in another. 

The meeting point is a former landfill in the middle of the desert and she has to remind herself that it’s a job like any other when Diego stops the truck and she sees two cars waiting for them a dozen yards away. 

“You good?” Miguel asks with his hand on the door handle.

She takes a deep breath, ties her hair away from her face and turns to him. “Let’s go.”

The people in the two cars get out of them just as they exit their truck. She immediately recognizes Richie in his suit, hair neatly slicked back, glasses that she knows he doesn’t need perched on his nose.

He’s watching them approach and she sees the exact moment he realizes they have a human amongst them. And who that human is. His careful blank expression morphs into utter disbelief and his lips form her name.

“What the fuck,” he says, turning to Kisa. “You brought Kate into this?! I’m telling you they want her and you go and fetch her?!” he shouts. 

Kisa rolls her eyes. “Richard, meet my team,” she says, gesturing to the four of them and the three other culebras standing behind them.

“Your team,” he repeats, his eyes locked on hers.

“Hi, Richie,” she says.

She watches him take in her shoulder holsters and the guns tucked in them, the stakes strapped to her thighs, the knife at her hip. His eyes linger on the scar near her hairline. Then they turn to Diego, Dorian and Miguel, how they’re standing close to her, and she knows he sees them for who they are. A team. A crew of fighters. Soldiers.

“You were out,” he says, dumbfounded.

“I was,” she nods. “But then I started getting chased by the rogues. There was no other choice.”

“Fuck.”

She shrugs. “We can talk about this once we’ve rescued Seth.”

He scoffs. “Oh, he’s gonna hate this.”

“Tough shit.”

Richie shares all he knows about the warehouse layout and the number of rogues holed up inside and she has a plan. Richie hates it and her team hates it and Kisa hates it but she doesn’t say anything because she knows the importance of making your own choices and taking back control. Seth will definitely hate it too when he realizes what she’s done, but it’s a good plan and they’re running out of time.

“You’re crazy, kid, you know that? But fuck, it might just fucking work,” Dorian says to her. She grins at him and he hugs her.

“We’ll be right behind you,” Miguel says, joining the hug. 

They let her go and Diego steps in, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her dead in the eyes. 

“If it goes south, I don’t care who that _pendejo_ is to you, I’m protecting you first,” he tells her and she knows it’s useless to protest. She nods and he pulls her to his chest. “Be careful.”

She steps back. “You too.”

She feels Richie’s eyes on her and sure enough, he’s leaning against his car and watching their exchange.

“You ready?” she asks him.

“Let’s go,” he replies, rounding the car and getting in the driver’s seat.

She gives one last glance to Kisa and her team and slips in the passenger seat.

“You seem to have good partners,” Richie says after ten minutes of silent driving.

“They’re great.”

It’s another five minutes of tense silence before Richie breaks it again.

“Why didn’t you come to us?” he asks.

She sighs. “Richie—”

“We would’ve protected you, you know that.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then why didn’t you come home?”

She blinks at his use of the word and swallows, rolling her shoulders back, trying to ease the tension in her upper back.

“I didn’t have a plan,” she says. “At first I was just running away, killing the culebras that got to me. Kisa is the one who found me.”

“So you decided that going with Kisa was better than coming to us?”

He sounds bitter, but also sad and guilty and this is exactly what she wanted to avoid.

“I wanted you to think I was out. I’ve seen the guilt you both carry, Richie. I wanted you to think I was living a normal life so you could stop flagellating yourselves about what happened.”

His hands tighten on the wheel. “I got you killed, Kate, I have every reason to feel guilty about this.”

“And that’s exactly why I didn’t come back to Jed’s. I’m not that same girl anymore and I’m never going to be her again and I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

“Disappoint me?”

She screws her eyes shut. Trying to explain her reasoning is hard. She’s not even sure she truly understands it herself most days. “I—just. I felt like you had all these expectations for me. Like I was going to wake up one day and magically be Katie-Cakes again, like nothing ever happened. It felt like until that moment, you would never let go of your guilt. So I let you think I was out and normal.”

“Fuck, Kate.”

“I never wanted you to know about this,” she says, gesturing to her weapons.

He snorts. “So what? Your plan was to never see us again, ever?”

“I didn’t _have_ a plan, okay? I was just focusing on killing the rogue culebras that kept coming after me! Maybe I was hoping that once every single one of these fuckers was dead, I would come back to Jed’s.”

“And what? Pretend you haven’t become the new Dean Winchester while you were away?”

“People usually say Buffy.”

“Kate—”

“What do you want me to say, Richie? That I’m sorry? Because I’m not! I did what I had to do to survive and you of all people should know what it’s like!”

His jaw clenches but he doesn’t say anything. She stares at the road.

“If there’s one thing I’m sorry for,” she starts again, softly, “it’s that being involved got Seth captured. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been wiping nests off the map.”

Richie huffs a laugh. “They would’ve killed him, not captured him, if they didn’t need him as bait. I’m pretty sure they’re considering killing him now. After all, they’ve had him twelve hours and you and I both know how insufferable he is.”

She chuckles and it feels like an olive branch. She turns to him. “Are we okay, then?”

He glances at her. “Kate. You’ve just designed and decided to execute the most reckless plan ever created to save my dumbass brother. We’re more than okay.”

“Good.”

“Seth is gonna be fucking furious, though.”

She shrugs. “He can be pissed all he wants.” 

“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one he’s going to shoot in the head.”

“He’s not gonna shoot you in the head, you’re just being dramatic.”

He gives her an incredulous look. “He absolutely will and it will not even be the first time.”

She laughs. “You’re gonna have to tell me about that.”

“Gonna have to wait for that. We’re here.”

She turns away from him to look at the warehouse. They park in plain sight. They’re expected anyway. She checks her guns, slips on her leather gloves and zips up her—Seth’s—oversized hoodie to hide all her weapons. She turns back to Richie, who’s already watching her. 

She smirks. “You got your balls on?” she asks, remembering the way Seth says it.

Richie looks a bit taken aback, but he grins at her before replying. “Screwed on tight.”

They exit the car.

The plan is a simple one. They walk in the warehouse by the front door like Richie is actually bringing them Kate and then they distract the brains of the operation while the rest of their team infiltrates the warehouse and disposes of everyone else. 

It goes as smoothly as expected, which is to say not at all, but she manages to kill two of the five culebras keeping her and Richie busy, enough for him to take care of the rest and allow her to go search for the cell where they’re keeping Seth. She hears roaring and shouts echoing across the entire warehouse. She hopes her team is safe. She’s not losing anyone today. She’s not losing anyone anymore.

She gets to a deserted corridor, with locked doors on each side and she proceeds to shoot open every single one of them until she finds Seth.

When she does find him, he’s tied to a chair, seemingly unconscious, his head hanging low over his naked chest. He’s bleeding from several places, his left eye is swollen shut and his face is more bruises and cuts than untouched skin. 

“Fuck,” she mutters. 

She rushes to him, disposing of the zip ties around his wrists and ankles quickly with a flick of her knife. She brings a careful hand to his face.

“Seth,” she calls softly. “Seth, c’mon, open your eyes.”

His right eye flutters open. “The fuck,” he mumbles around his split lip. 

He’s staring at her like he’s not quite seeing her. From the state of his face, he must be concussed. Possibly even experiencing confusion and brain fog from all the blood he lost. She tries her best not to look at the puddles of blood across the floor. The last thing she needs right now is to let herself panic.

“You’re not here,” he says in a barely intelligible voice. “You’re not here.”

“I’m here, Seth, and we have to go. C’mon, lean on me.”

“‘T’s a trap.”

“I know. Richie and the others are taking care of them.”

Something seems to spark inside of him at the mention of his brother. His eye seems to focus on her for the first time since he regained consciousness and he frowns and winces.

“Kate…?”

“Yep.”

She shrugs off her hoodie and helps him put it on. He’s letting her manhandle him like he’s not quite sure how to react. Or if she’s actually here at all, despite following her every move with his eyes—eye.

“The fuck are you doing here?” he asks and she hears the frustration bleeding into his words.

“Saving your ass,” she replies curtly as she wraps her right arm around his torso. “C’mon, up.”

He gets to his feet and staggers until he actually lets himself lean on her with his left arm around her shoulders. She keeps a gun in her left hand and they wobble to the entrance of his cell. She clears the corridor before pulling him into it. 

“I’d feel better if I had a gun,” he says, slurring his words a little. 

She rolls her eyes. “You have a concussion, one good eye, not enough blood, and we both know you suck at shooting with your right hand.”

He grumbles at her, not thrilled, but lets her take the lead.

They get to the end of the corridor. She props Seth up against a crate and goes to check their exit. She can’t hear any sound of fighting, but that doesn’t mean they’re clear.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Seth says behind her. 

“And your blood should be inside you, but here we fucking are,” she replies without looking at him.

“If you two are done flirting, we can go now,” a voice says from the other end of the corridor, startling her.

She’s turned around to face the newcomer with her gun raised and ready to shoot, but her finger stills on the trigger when she recognizes Miguel’s face.

“For fuck’s sake, Miguel!” she shouts. “I almost fucking shot you!”

Miguel grins, visibly proud of himself, before looking at Seth. “Ouch, that looks bad.”

Seth’s glare isn’t very effective given the fact that he only has one eye open and the way he’s slouched against the crate, breathing heavily and bleeding through the hoodie. 

“You think?” he still grits out. 

“Everyone’s good?” she asks. 

“Yep. Cora set the charges, we’re ready to move.”

She lets out a relieved exhale. “Alright. Can you help him out?” she asks, jerking her head to Seth, whose face is getting paler by the second, but who’s still looking at them like he’s trying to figure out what the hell is going on in his life.

He only mildly protests when Miguel moves to his side and helps him up, and that’s all the confirmation she needs that he’s in _bad_ shape. They exit the warehouse and join their teams waiting for them by the trucks and the cars. 

“Well, shit,” Richie says when he sees the state of his brother. 

“We need to deal with all this,” she says. “And I can’t do it in the back of a fucking car so let’s find a place to crash.”

“I’m driving back to the compound,” Kisa says. “I’ll send Doc to you.”

Cora chooses that moment to detonate the charges and the warehouse crumbles to the ground. 

Diego drives them to the first motel they find, Dorian in the front with him, her in the backseat with Seth laid down with his head on her lap, Miguel in the bed of the truck, and Richie following in his own car after he ordered his people to go back to Jed’s.

Seth loses consciousness a few minutes after they start driving and Diego has to carry him to the room Richie has gotten them.

She quickly divests Seth of the now blood soaked hoodie and gets to work, Miguel and Richie helping her as Diego and Dorian leave in search of food, drinks and more medical equipment. They patch Seth up the best they can but she still feels like they’re forgetting something. 

She looks down at her hands and sees all the blood there. 

“He needs blood,” she says like she’s in a daze.

“What? He ain’t one of us,” Miguel replies.

“No, he needs a blood transfusion,” she says, grabbing their medical kit that is so much more than first aid at this point, hoping she wasn’t hallucinating when she saw a transfusion kit in it months ago. 

“How do you know you’re compatible?” Richie says to her, panic creeping into his voice.

She ties the cordon around her biceps and clenches her fist. Veins bulge out in the crook of her elbow. “He gave me his blood, after Amaru sliced her way out of me,” she says quietly without looking at him. “Stick him,” she orders and he does and then she’s sticking herself and she lies back against the headboard of the bed. Blood rapidly fills the tube between them. 

Diego and Dorian choose that time to come back. 

“Ugh, humans,” Dorian says, shaking his head. “So fragile.”

“I will punch you in the throat,” she replies without any heat in her voice. 

Diego gives her a water bottle and a protein bar and she swallows them down greedily as her blood flows into Seth. 

It’s a while before any of them speak, like they’re afraid the sound of their voices is going to bring some catastrophe on them. 

“Unhook us,” she says weakly when she starts getting seriously light headed and Diego reacts before anyone can. 

“What now?” Richie asks once he’s done bandaging Seth’s arm. 

She thanks Diego as he finishes taping white gauze to her arm. “Now we wait,” she says. “Kisa said she was sending Doc.” She slides down until she’s laying down next to Seth. “I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up when Doc’s here.”

The thing that wakes her up is actually not Doc showing up but Seth regaining consciousness and starting to bicker with Richie almost right away. She tries ignoring their voices but gives up quickly. She opens her eyes. Diego is in the armchair and she can tell by the way he’s sitting that even though his eyes are closed, he’s awake and pretending not to be. She rolls over in the direction of the brothers’ voices.

“For someone who almost died, you’re certainly loud,” she groans into the pillow.

Seth and Richie immediately stop talking over each other. Seth is propped up on a couple of pillows and his face has regained some of its normal color under the bruises.

She sits up. “You can stop pretending to sleep,” she says to Diego without looking at him. “Where are Dorian and Miguel?” 

“Went to get some food,” Richie replies. 

She stands up and stretches. Her spine pops satisfyingly.

“Any word from Doc?” she asks as she unbuckles her holsters from her shoulders. It’s not the first time she’s fallen asleep in her equipment, and as usual she feels sore where the unnatural shapes pressed into her body. 

Diego shakes his head. 

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” Seth asks. 

“We rescued you, you almost died, we’re waiting for our doc to come over and make sure you’re not dying some more.”

“And who the fuck is this?”

“This is Diego. He’s part of my team.”

Seth gives her an incredulous look. Then he laughs, sounding slightly hysterical on the edges. “Your team?”

She takes a deep breath and sets her guns down on the table. She sees her duffle bag on the floor next to the door, grabs it and sits down, starting to disassemble and clean her weapons. Seth follows her movements like a hawk. 

“Yeah. My team.”

“ _Kate_. What the _fuck_.”

She glances up at Richie then Diego. “Can you give us a minute?”

Diego rises from the armchair and leaves after throwing a warning stare at Seth. Richie follows him. 

“Don’t shoot him,” he tells her before closing the door.

She stops cleaning her guns and lets the silence fill the room, until Seth’s frustration becomes an almost palpable entity between them. 

“Care to explain how the fuck you joined SWAT Culebra Edition?”

She sighs and pushes her hair away from her face and grimaces when she feels the dried blood caked in it. 

She gets up and sits on the second bed, facing Seth. 

“It wasn’t planned,” she starts. “And before you get angry—well, angrier—I want you to know that I never wanted to hurt you.”

He seems to deflate a bit at this. “It doesn’t sound very encouraging, Princess.”

She flinches at the use of the pet name. He’s the only one who can call her that and she missed it. It hits her then, how much she missed him. She clenches her fists, swallows the tears and does her best to explain. 

“I was out,” she starts. “I was trying to find myself again, just like I told you I would when I left. I’ve never lied to you, Seth.”

The look he gives her makes her want to cross the space between them and tuck herself against his chest, but he needs to know everything and she won’t be able to get the words out if she’s crying in his arms. She looks down at her lap.

“A culebra found me one night. Then another. I had to leave Houston. I didn’t know where to go, I was just running.”

“Why didn’t you come back to m—to us?” 

She winces at how weary his voice sounds and she’s afraid to look at him. “I thought—if you believed I was out, with a normal life, I thought you’d be able to forgive yourself.”

“Goddamnit, Kate.”

“Kisa found me. Offered me a place to stay. To fight back.”

He swallows audibly. “Were you ever gonna come back to us?”

She sniffles, closes her eyes against the tears but it’s useless and she feels one rolling down her cheek. “I didn’t know how. I didn’t want you to see who I became. I wasn’t thinking about the future. I was just—all I was ever thinking about was the next job, the next fight, keeping my team safe.”

“Your team.”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t speak for a while, and the silence stretches between them.

“I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

She glances up. There’s no trace of anger on Seth’s face, only his exhaustion and something else, something earnest and raw and open and she can’t name it and she can’t stop the sobs coming out of her. 

“Seth. I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to apologize for,” he says. 

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t’ve been captured.”

“If it weren’t for you, I’d be fucking dead.”

She stares at her hands, hanging limply between her knees. “I missed you,” she admits quietly. 

“Kate,” he says softly. “C’mere.” She raises her eyes from her fingers but doesn’t move. “Don’t make me stand up and get you, Princess. I’m pretty sure I’d topple down before getting to my feet.”

She snorts through her tears and crosses the space between them, slotting herself carefully against him, mindful of the ugly bruises and gashes littering his chest. He wraps his arms around her, holding her close.

“You owe me a hoodie,” she mumbles, her eyes on the bloodied garment at the end of the bed.

“That shit was mine in the first place, you thief.”

“I learned from the best.”

He hums quietly and his fingers start drawing patterns on her bare arms, tracing her tattoos. She closes her eyes and listens to the steady beat of his heart.

“Kate.”

“Hm?”

“I missed you too.”

“It’s too calm,” says a voice from the other side of the door.

“You think she killed him?” asks another.

“Please tell me you didn’t make me drive all the way for a fucking corpse,” grumbles yet another one. 

She lifts her head from Seth’s chest. She fell asleep again. He’s breathing deeply and evenly next to her and when she looks at his face, he’s not frowning. If she ignores the black eye, the split lip, the bruises, he almost looks peaceful. 

He only groans a little when she frees herself from his embrace. She opens the door and finds her team, plus Richie and Doc, huddled on the other side.

“The fuck are you doing?” she asks. 

“We didn’t know if we could come in,” Dorian says sheepishly.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you be allowed to come in?”

“I didn’t want to walk in on you and my brother in a compromising position,” Richie grins. 

She gives him a flat look and wills herself not to blush. “I’m pretty sure that having sex would kill him right now,” she deadpans.

“If you’re all done being assholes, can I go make sure no one is actually actively dying?” Doc says in a biting tone. 

She steps aside and gestures to the bed. “Knock yourself out.” She turns to Miguel and Dorian. “Did you get food?”

“We did.”

“And we ate it.”

“It would’ve been cold by now anyway.”

She rolls her eyes. “Un-fucking-believable.” She holds up her hand, palm up. “Keys.”

“What?”

“The keys to the truck, c’mon. I’m starving and I’m not eating another protein bar. I want a fucking burger.”

They don’t move and just. Stare.

“Um, maybe let us go grab you a burger,” Dorian says carefully.

“And in the meantime, maybe go take a shower,” Miguel continues.

She squints at them.

“You have blood on you,” Diego explains before she can start cursing at them.

“A shitton of it,” Richie helpfully adds.

“Ugh, fine. Get me two burgers, extra bacon, with sweet potatoes on the side.”

“Two?”

“He’s gonna need to eat too and I don’t want him stealing my fucking food.”

“Get me a horchata too,” Richie says. Miguel and Dorian laugh, and even Diego smirks.

“Yeah, right, get your own damn horchata, Gecko.”

They flip the hoods of their jackets over their heads and jog to the truck as quick as they can through the sunlight. 

“Your friends are rude,” Richie comments. 

“Right, because now you’re the poster boy for good manners.”

“Hey.”

“Go get your drink, Richie.”

He takes a step toward his car. “You’re gonna be okay here?”

“I think I can deal with a half-dead human and a cranky doctor.”

She goes back inside. Doc is taking Seth’s vitals and Seth is awake and not protesting or running his mouth or pretending it’s not necessary and Doc doesn’t look like he’s two seconds away from punching his patient, so she decides it’s safe for her to disappear in the bathroom for a while.

She glances at her reflection and recoils a bit. She does look like an extra from a Tarantino movie. She peels her tank top off of her, scrunching her nose at the feeling of crusty blood flaking away, steps out of her boots and shimmies out of her jeans. She turns on the water, waits for it to warm up, then removes her underwear and steps under the spray.

She scrubs herself from head to toe, feeling like she’s removing a week's worth of dirt and grime until the water finally runs clear. She curses when she realizes she forgot her duffle bag in the room, wraps a towel around her and opens the bathroom door.

“We got your food,” Miguel announces when he sees her, then he goes back to polishing his knives, sitting cross legged on the otherwise empty second bed. 

Dorian is quietly talking on the phone but he points at the table by the door and sure enough there’s a couple of grease stained bags on top of it. She looks around the table, pretty sure it was where she left her bag.

“Here,” Diego says, holding her duffle bag out for her.

She takes it with a thanks and Diego turns back to whatever it is that he’s doing in the tiny kitchen area. She catches Seth’s and Richie’s incredulous looks as she goes back to the bathroom and she frowns at them.

“What?” she asks.

Richie quickly looks down at his horchata cup but Seth holds her gaze a couple more seconds before focusing on the IV Doc is currently inserting into his arm. 

She shakes her head and goes back to the bathroom. 

She wants to laugh when she sees which shirt she packed with her. Of course it’s Seth’s old henley. She’s almost tempted to pretend she forgot to pack a fresh shirt so Miguel, Dorian or Diego can give her one of theirs. But then she realizes she’s being ridiculous, pops her neck, gets dressed and gets back out into the room. She makes a beeline for the table and attacks her food viciously. 

“So,” she calls to Doc once half her burger is gone. “What’s the diagnosis?”

Doc snorts. “The diagnosis is that you dumbasses should stop throwing yourselves into potentially fatal situations.”

She tilts her head to the side and looks at Doc flatly as she takes another bite of her burger and chews it slowly.

The boys don’t say anything, and she figures they don’t exactly consider this their business, and Seth and Richie look like they don’t dare to say anything by fear of getting their heads bitten off. 

Doc sighs. “Plenty of rest, plenty of fluid, ice for the bruises, Ibuprofen for the rest. You didn’t fuck up the stitches too badly.”

“Glowing praise coming from you.”

“Keep the IV in for the next two days and make sure he eats enough.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Doc dismisses her words with a wave, takes a couple of IV bags from his kit and puts them down on the bed.

“I wanna say take care of yourselves, but I know it’s useless with you lot,” Doc says when he’s at the door.

“Eh, we can try,” she smiles at him. 

Doc rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you do that.”

Then he’s gone.

She finishes her food.

“What’s the plan?” Dorian asks after several minutes of utter silence. 

“You heard Doc. Two days on the IV.”

Miguel puts down the knife he was sharpening. “So we’re staying here two more days?” 

“I am,” she says. “You can go back to the compound if you want. We have two vehicles between us.”

“We’re staying,” Diego counters.

“Does anyone want to know what I want to do?” Seth asks the room at large.

“No,” they all reply at the same time. 

Richie lets out a loud snort.

“What the fuck are you laughing at?” Seth bites out at him.

“You.”

“I will shoot you in the face, Richard.”

She gets up and grabs the bag with the untouched burger and fries.

“No one is shooting anyone,” she announces as she takes the food to Seth. She turns to her team. “Here’s the plan. I want one of you to call Kisa, let her know we’re coming back in two days. We also need someone to get him,” she points at Seth, “some new clothes and finally _please_ go find me some tequila because I don’t have my ID on me and none of you fuckers will get carded.” She claps her hands together and makes a twirling motion with her index finger. “ _Vámonos_.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Miguel says with a pseudo scout salute, then he leaves the room, Dorian and Diego following after him.

She turns to Seth. “You. Eat.” He opens and closes his mouth a few times. She looks at Richie. “Is he having a stroke?”

Richie laughs. “I think he’s just trying to adjust to this new version of you.”

“I’m right here.”

“We know.”

“Eat your burger, Seth.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/638870519834345472/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-ii-3-she)


	6. Part III - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They share the rest of her coffee and the hawk cries above them again. She closes her eyes and listens to Seth breathe.  
> He nudges her lightly. “Hey.”  
> “Hm.”  
> “Thank you. For, you know, saving me.”  
> She snuggles into his chest. “Let’s not pass blood between us again, yeah?”  
> His laughter is a deep rumble under her ear. “Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy new year! may 2021 bring you lots of great fic!  
> in the meantime, here's an update

Three days later they pile up in their truck, Seth and Richie in their car, and they drive to Kisa’s base. There’s no discussion about the brothers following them. They just do.

Dorian is driving and she’s in the passenger seat, her window rolled down, the night wind tangling her hair.

“So what now?” Miguel asks from the backseat.

She turns around. “What?”

“What happens now?” 

He’s frowning. She’s not sure what he’s asking. “We’re going back to the base,” she answers and she doesn’t want to make it sound like a question, but it does.

“Are you staying?” Dorian asks. 

She glances at him and he’s sporting the same sullen expression. “Where the fuck do you want me to go?” Dorian shrugs. She turns back to Miguel. “What the hell is this about?”

“The Geckos,” Miguel starts. “They know the truth about you now.”

“And?”

“Are you going back to them?”

Her eyes bug out of her head. “Where the hell does that come from?”

“You have a history,” Diego says carefully.

She turns around in her seat, facing the road once more. “I’ve spent more time fighting with you assholes than with them.”

“We’ve seen how protective you are of each other,” Dorian says with a quick glance. “You and Seth.”

She brings her hands to her face. “For fuck’s sake,” she mutters and sighs. “I’m not leaving you if that’s what’s freaking you out. I don’t care what Seth or Richie say. We’re a team and you won’t get rid of me that easily, sorry to disappoint.”

“Good,” Miguel replies. 

They park in front of the compound just before midnight and Kisa is waiting for them at the door.

“Seth, you look less like shit,” she greets him.

“Thank you, your worshipness,” he replies sarcastically and Kisa snorts as she turns away and moves back inside.

“C’mon, lunch is ready.”

“Who cooked?” Dorian asks.

“Youmna. Her arm is almost grown back entirely.”

Seth makes a face but he follows the rest of them to the common room.

“Wash your goddamn hands and give me your weapons before you eat, you savages!” she calls to her team as they rush to the table. “For Christ’s sake, who raised you?”

They at least have the decency to look embarrassed. The other culebras sitting at the table laugh at them, comments about how “the tiny human is holding them by the balls” fussing here and there in a mocking tone and she glares at them.

“Hey, nobody trash talk my team,” she warns.

“You just did!” Tomas protests.

“And I’m the only one who can,” she grins, flipping her knife out of its sheath.

She collects their weapons and deposits them on a work table to be dealt with later, then sits down next to Diego. Seth and Richie join them, Seth sliding on the bench on her left side and Richie sitting opposite her. Youmna gives them plates piled high with rice and meat and fried dumplings and she’s all too happy to finally be eating homemade food after three days of greasy takeout.

“What did we miss?” Dorian asks the rest of the table once his plate is cleared out for the second time.

“Tomas, Cora, and Cinzia are leaving for Waco,” Kisa says. “We heard rumors of a new altar being set up there.”

“Have fun,” Miguel says to the trio. 

“Send me pictures of the explosion,” she says to Cora, who grins a bit manically. From the corner of her eyes, she sees Seth and Richie exchange a glance.

Seth, Richie and Kisa disappear together after lunch, probably to discuss strategy or business or whatever it is that they do.

There’s a restlessness thrumming under her skin, a buzzing she knows comes from the fact that she has been basically sitting on her hands for the past three days after an adrenaline high. She needs to punch something.

“I’m going to the gym,” she announces. “Anyone wanna join?”

Miguel snorts. “Nope. I’m gonna take care of our weapons and after that I’m going to sleep somewhere I won't have to hear a Gecko bitch about your lifestyle choices.”

She tilts her head to Dorian and Diego. They look at each other, Diego nods and Dorian shrugs.

“Yeah, why not.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

She changes out of her days old clothes, slips on a pair of sweatpants and a sports bra and goes to the gym. She goes through her warm up on autopilot, and she doesn’t realize she’s been pushing harder than usual until she’s wrapping up her hands and strands of hair are stuck to her face and neck, soaked in sweat. 

She wipes herself with a towel and goes to the punching bags. She jabs and kicks and ducks and punches but her head doesn’t clear. She still hears her team asking her if she’s going to leave them. 

_Jab, duck, jab, cross._

She feels Seth’s arms around her. She hears the remorse in Richie’s voice.

 _Jab, cross, kick, jab_.

She sees Seth’s blood on the floor of the warehouse. She hears Diego’s deep voice. _You have a history_. 

_Jab, cross, duck, kick._

She remembers her first job with the team, and all the other jobs after that, how afraid they were when she broke her ribs. She sees Seth’s face as he let her walk through the gates of Hell. _Time to pay up._

“Damn, what did that bag do to you?” Dorian calls from the entrance of the gym.

She relaxes from her fighting form and immobilizes the bag. “Just got a lot of pent up energy,” she says as she turns around to see him and Diego move closer. 

“Wanna do it here or in the ring?”

She grins. “Ring.”

“Should we call the others, make a show out of it?”

“Do you have a bet to win again?”

“Yes, he does,” Diego replies. “He’s gonna lose.”

“What’s the bet?”

“You can’t know. Conflict of interest.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine. Let’s go.”

She gets to the ring with Diego, Dorian having left them to tell everyone about the free show that was about to start. Diego holds up his hands and motions for her to punch them, as if he was wearing punching mitts. 

“Are you trying to tire me out before the fight?” she jokes, but she punches his hands alternatively and ducks when he loosely swings at her.

“Don’t think I’m gonna tire you out more than whatever you were doing to that punching bag.”

Dorian comes back with a bunch of culebras in tow and joins them on the ring, Miguel behind him.

“I thought you wanted to nap?” she smirks at him.

“That was before he told me there was a betting pool.”

“Are you gonna MC this fight, then?”

“Fuck yeah I am.”

She rewraps her hands and raises an eyebrow at Dorian and Diego. “You wanna warm up beforehand?”

Dorian grins wolfishly. “I’m always ready.”

“Y’all good?” Miguel asks them and they nod at him. “Perfect.” He turns toward the small audience they have amassed. “Ladies and bunch of miscreants!” he calls loudly.

“Who you callin’ a lady?” Youmna shouts from the crowd.

“Not you, darlin’, that’s for sure,” he smiles before blowing her a kiss. “Anyway! Welcome to your free entertainment of the night! Our fragile little human—”

“I’m gonna shoot you in the head, Miguel,” she calmly states with a sweet smile.

“I mean the fearless leader of my team,” he corrects dramatically and she snorts, “is gonna kick these motherfuckers’ asses and if you’re feelin’ lucky, there’s a betting pool going on and I’ll be your bookie!”

He steps out of the ring. She rolls her shoulders, cracks her neck and assumes her fighting stance, Diego and Dorian doing the same a couple feet from her. 

There’s movement at the periphery of her vision, but she doesn’t try to see what it is. Her focus is on the ring and the ring only. 

“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” she hears Kisa’s voice say somewhere on her left.

Then Miguel shouts “FIGHT” at them and nothing exists except her opponents and her fists. There’s no rule for their sparring sessions, beside not killing or incapacitating someone long term. They don’t stick to one style of fighting, because they’re training for actual combat situations, not for the fucking Olympic Games. They’re playing dirty with each other and while Diego and Dorian are holding back, she knows they're only pulling back their strength to make it match a normal human being. 

They rush to her. She barely avoids Diego's left hook and she has to saunter away from Dorian's high kick but she's light on her feet and manages to punch Diego in the kidneys. 

Around her, the crowd hollers. 

She gets a fist in the nose and stumbles back. The hand she brings to her face comes back bloody.

"Sorry!" Dorian shouts.

"I'm not!" she calls back.

She trips him and lands a perfect elbow jab in his sternum but Diego surges behind her and pins her arms on each side of her in his fighting version of a bear hug. She throws her legs up until she’s folded in half and her calves are locked around his neck and she yanks. There’s an audible crack and the crowd winces.

All three of them are on the floor and breathing hard when Miguel shouts “WEAPONS” and a knife, a stick and two batons are thrown on the ring. She forward rolls away from the men and grabs the knife.

Dorian gets to his feet and glares at Miguel. “Really, man?”

Miguel shrugs and grins. 

She twirls the knife in her hand and cocks her hips. “Are you giving up, boys?”

Diego stands up as well, twisting his neck around. It pops with a sickening crunch. Dorian winces and looks at him with a “what the hell, dude” face. She doesn’t let them dawdle more and charges at them, blade out. She pushes Diego away with a kick in the solar plexus and tries to stab Dorian in the shoulder, but he parries her attack and blocks her hand in an armlock.

He smiles smugly at her. “Gotcha.”

She tilts an eyebrow. “You sure about that?” she asks playfully. Then she opens the hand holding the knife and lets it drop into her other hand. 

He realizes what happened half a second too late.

“Seriously?” he groans as she slashes his shirt. 

“Should’ve lost the shirt before we started,” she grins. "You know better."

He looks down at his chest and rips the rest of his shirt away. “Is this a plan to make your boyfriend jealous?” he asks as he catches her in the jaw, sending her to the floor.

She rubs at her cheek and spits some blood on the mat. “Not my boyfriend,” she pants, reaching backward to close her fist around a baton that she sends flying at Dorian’s head.

Diego grabs the opportunity to try and pin her to the floor, but she rolls away and kicks his knee in. They grapple until her knife stills millimeters away from his chest.

“You’re dead,” she announces, breathing heavily but beaming at the same time. 

He sinks into the mat. “Well done.”

She stands up and offers him a hand to help him get to his feet. 

“One down, one to go!” Miguel yells as Diego steps down from the ring.

She wipes sweat and blood from her face and faces Dorian once more. He has her baton in hand. She throws the knife to the side and takes the stick. 

She knows she’s not going to last long, but the adrenaline coursing through her veins is the best thing she’s felt in three days and she’s having _fun_. Dorian too, by the look on his face. 

His baton clashes against her stick and the vibration reverberates through her arms. She plants her stick in the mat and uses it as leverage to kick Dorian in the stomach with both her feet and when she lands, she brings it around to smack him in the face. She can’t help the grin spreading over her lips.

“It’s very disturbing to see you smile with so much blood on your teeth,” he calls to her from the other side of the ring as they circle each other.

She laughs and pounces, backing him into a corner until the end of her stick is flush against his skin, right over his heart. She raises her eyes from his chest to his face.

“Do you yield?”

He rolls his eyes and drops the baton. “Fuck.”

Cheers erupt from their audience and Miguel steps on the ring again. He grabs her arm and raises it high.

“Undefeated five times in a row—”

“Six.”

“Lemme do my job, kid.” She gives him a look. “Fine. Undefeated, _six_ times in a row, Kate, leader of team _pendejo_!”

“Hey, who you calling a _pendejo, cabrón_?”

“Can I know what the bet was now?” 

Miguel leans closer to her. “Oh you know, the usual. Who was gonna be down first, how you were gonna take them, that kinda thing.” He shrugs. “If the Gecko boy was gonna pop a boner seeing you like that,” he adds like it’s a perfectly normal and innocent thing to say. 

She stares at him and he jerks imperceptibly his head to the side. She pretends to give a sarcastic salute to the crowd to look at what he’s pointing at. 

Kisa, Richie and Seth are standing at the back of the room. Kisa’s arms are crossed over her chest and she’s smirking, a proud and amused look on her face like she knows something no one else does. Richie’s eyebrows are up to his hairline, his eyes wide and impressed. Seth is just. Staring right at her, gaping a little. 

She steps down from the ring and there’s people congratulating her and money changing hands. She high fives Diego and Dorian and winces when Dorian pokes her bruised cheek. 

“Alright, alright, back to work!” Kisa calls from the back of the room. There’s groans and weak protests, but the room clears out. 

“You gonna leave the punching bags alone now?” Dorian smirks, falling in step with her as she walks toward the showers, Diego on her other side and Miguel in front. 

“Yep. I’m gonna sleep for twelve hours and if anyone wakes me up and it’s not an emergency, I will behead them.”

“So much violence in such a small body,” Miguel comments.

“That small body just broke my neck,” Diego groans.

She grimaces and looks up at him. “I didn’t mean to actually break it, sorry.”

“Eh. No one died.”

She collapses in bed but wakes up well before getting those twelve hours she wanted. Her phone tells her it’s seven in the morning and her body tells her it’s not going to go back to sleep. She sits up and groans, muscles sore all over. Still worth it. 

She throws a flannel shirt over her tank top and sleep shorts and goes to the common room, saying good night to the culebras she walks by as they head to their bunks. 

She throws out the cold leftover coffee and brews some fresh. Then she takes her mug and goes outside. She sits on the ground, her bare feet digging into the dirt, the dry grass tickling her legs. The sun is already high. A hawk screams and she looks up, sees it circling around. She follows its movement across the sky. Sometimes, she’s jealous that Kisa has wings and the ability to fly. It used to be the superpower she wanted to have when she was a kid and playing with Scott.

“Mind if I join you?” 

She turns around. Seth is standing a few feet away from her, his hands deep in the pockets of the sweatpants Diego got him a couple days ago.

“Sure,” she replies, facing the desert once more.

He sits down next to her. “Nice showdown last night.”

She chuckles and takes a sip of her coffee. She offers the mug to him. “It’s black,” she says when he starts pushing it away. He raises an eyebrow at her, like he wants to ask what happened to her cream and sugar. She shrugs. 

He takes it and swallows a mouthful. 

“So,” he says. She looks at him from the corner of her eyes, but he’s staring at the hills on the horizon. “This is your home.”

She leans back on her hands. “This is where I live.”

“Is there a difference?”

He turns to her when she doesn’t answer. She glances at him, shrugs. 

“Richie and I are going back to Jed’s tonight.”

It doesn’t matter that she knew it was coming, that she was expecting it. It still hurts to hear it. 

“Okay.”

“I’m not gonna ask you to come with us.”

She sits up and hugs her knees to her chest, laying the side of her head on top of them.

“Why not?”

He traces the tattoo on her wrist, the scar above her elbow, his fingers a feather touch. “Because I might be a selfish bastard, but I want you to be happy,” he says in a low voice, like speaking the words too loud would break something. “And I’ve seen you with these people. With your team. They’re more than that.”

It’s not a question, but she nods anyway. “They’re like family to me,” she admits quietly.

“Yeah.” His voice is hoarse and he drops his hand. “I can tell. They’re good to you.” There’s so much self loathing pouring out of him she practically chokes on it.

“Seth.” She takes his hand in hers and holds on tight. “You’re good to me too.”

He huffs and looks down at their hands. “I’m really not, Princess.”

“Shut up.”

“Wha—”

“Shut up, Seth. I get to decide what’s good for me or not. Not you. Not anyone else. Me.”

“Ka—”

“I’m not done. The guys are my family. But you and Richie… We’ve been through too many things to pretend there isn’t something there. You’re my family too and I don’t care if you’re still drowning in self pity. So stop being a fucking martyr, okay?”

She can’t read the look on his face, but his fingers lace with hers and squeeze. She tilts to the side until she can lean her head on his shoulder and her knees are practically on his lap. He wraps an arm around her and kisses her forehead. 

“I don’t want you to go,” she says to his chest. “But I know you can’t stay either. And I’m not leaving my team.”

“I know. I get it.”

“It doesn’t mean I won’t drive down to Jed's to visit.”

He nods against her head. “If you want to.”

“Do _you_ want me to?”

“If I had my ways I’d be kidnapping you right now.”

She snorts. “Yeah, bad idea, Dorian and Miguel would track you in less than an hour and Diego would try to smash your head like a watermelon.”

“Only try?”

“I would stop him.”

“How nice of you.”

They share the rest of her coffee and the hawk cries above them again. She closes her eyes and listens to Seth breathe.

He nudges her lightly. “Hey.”

“Hm.”

“Thank you. For, you know, saving me.”

She snuggles into his chest. “Let’s not pass blood between us again, yeah?”

His laughter is a deep rumble under her ear. “Sounds like a plan, Stan.”

She wakes up in her bed, alone. There’s a knock at her door before Dorian’s head pokes through. 

“Breakfast is ready.”

She waves and nods, not feeling quite conscious yet.

Her entire body still hurts like a motherfucker when she gets to her feet and she swallows some ibuprofen pills dry before she goes to the common room. 

“There’s our warrior!” Miguel exclaims when she plops down on a chair. 

“Shut the fuck up,” she groans, dropping her head on her crossed arms. 

“That bad, uh.”

“Ah, _humans_ ,” Dorian sighs. “You can kick our asses but in the morning you’re the one who’s suffering.”

“I will shoot you in the ‘nads.”

“Love you too, kiddo.”

“No one is shooting anyone,” Kisa calls from the hallway and they all turn around to see her come in. “You have a job.”

They groan and this time, she’s not the only one to thump her head down on the table.

“ _Querida,_ we just came back from a job! And a shitty one even!” Dorian protests.

“Yeah well, you had enough energy to kick each other’s asses yesterday so you’ll be fine today. Be ready by 8.”

And with that, she turns on her heel and leaves.

They get briefed in, they devise a plan (go in, shoot first, ask questions later) and get to the truck.

Seth and Richie exit the base at the same time and she remembers what Seth said that morning. They’re leaving, going back to Jed’s, to their own lives.

Richie raises an eyebrow when he sees them, equipped for a raid and armed to the teeth. 

“Kisa’s working you into the ground?” he asks lightly.

“Damn right she is,” Miguel grumbles. 

“Where you heading?” Seth asks.

“Santa Anna,” she replies. “Should be a quick one.”

“Yeah, we don’t have to rescue anyone this time,” Dorian comments. She gets the urge to punch the grin off his face.

Seth glares at him but doesn’t say anything. Miracles still exist apparently. She lets her boys get to the truck, and Seth lets Richie go to the car until they can pretend to have some privacy. 

“Be careful,” he tells her.

“You’re the one who got captured,” she replies with a smile.

He rolls his eyes. “Alright, smartass,” he says good-naturedly, pulling her into a hug. “I’d say I trust these guys to protect you but from what I saw last night, they don’t really need to.”

“Damn right they don’t.”

He leans back, just enough to look at her in the eyes. “Don’t be a stranger, okay?”

She closes her eyes, relishes into the feeling of his hands cradling her face and takes a deep breath before looking at him again and nodding. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You better.”

He pulls her close again, kisses the crown of her head.

“We gotta roll, brother!” Richie calls from the car.

Seth sighs. “Great timing as always,” he mutters with a shake of his head.

She chuckles and steps away. “Don’t kill Richie,” she tells him as she walks backward in the direction of the truck.

“No promises.”

She climbs into the back, fastens her seatbelt and pauses, sensing three pairs of eyes on her. She looks up and sure enough, her three teammates are staring at her with a dumb smile (Dorian), a smirk (Miguel), and a raised eyebrow (Diego).

“What?”

“That was adorable,” Dorian says as he turns around in the driver seat and starts the truck.

“Yeah, I kinda want to give him the shovel talk but, at the same time, that was the cutest shit I’ve ever seen,” Miguel adds. 

She glares at Diego. “Anything you wanna say?”

He raises his hands in surrender and turns away. 

“You didn’t kiss him?” Miguel asks. She throws one of her stakes at his head. “Ow! I’ll take that as a no. Pay up, _Amado_.”

She watches as Dorian takes a 50 dollars bill from his back pocket and angrily slaps it into Miguel’s waiting hand.

“Y’all are way too invested in my life.”

They drive through the desert and sometime during the second hour of the trip, Seth and Richie’s car takes a turn and disappears into the night. 

They reach Santa Anna at around one in the morning and the plan goes without a hitch. They’re even back on the road before the sun rises. They return to the compound in the middle of the morning and she backs the truck into the garage so the boys don’t burn between the truck and the entrance to the base. 

Life goes back to normal, or as normal as it can be. The only change is the texts she randomly exchanges with Richie, and sometimes with Seth. She wants to drive down to Jed’s but she doesn’t know how to tell the boys. She doesn’t want them to think she’s abandoning them, because she’s _not_ , but she’s afraid that if she goes to Jed’s, she will not know how to leave again and come back to Kisa’s.

Half a dozen jobs come and go, nothing major, nothing life threatening (for them), but they all feel like something big is coming. The rogue culebras get more desperate, taking more risks, popping up left and right like a goddamn whack-a-mole game. 

Miguel gets half his arm blown off protecting her from a fucking grenade. That’s the first time they have to get the medical blood bags out so he can feed and heal faster. 

The second time is for Diego, who took a blade through the stomach and she’s holding his guts so they don’t spill out of him and she’s trying not to freak out about the fact that her hands are _literally_ inside of him until he puts a bloodied hand on the side of her face and tells he’ll be alright. She doesn’t feel very badass that night. 

Dorian gets poisoned and he starts slowly asphyxiating, his neck swelling and his face turning red and she has to stab him through the throat so the air can get directly to his lungs. 

Every time it happens, every time they come back bloody and beaten to a pulp and she’s still shaking from the _what if_ , they all pile up on her bed and sleep tangled in each other, listening to the others breathe.

The thought of going down to Jed’s doesn’t cross her mind as much after that. Sure, she misses Seth and her heart does a stupid little twinge whenever she thinks about him and she feels like a schoolgirl with a silly crush, but the fear of something happening to her team while she's away from them is stronger than her desire to see him.

It all culminates in a tiny town in the middle of the desert, almost exactly two years after Matanzas. It’s supposed to be a classic get in get out job, but it isn’t. It goes south so fast that she barely has the time to register anything that happens around her.

An explosion throws her to the ground and she can’t hear anything past the ringing in her ears, but she sees Miguel on his stomach and there’s a piece of wood sticking out of his back and all she can think is _no no nonono no_. She rushes to him and he’s shouting something at her but she _can’t hear_ and he looks desperate like he doesn’t want her to get close but he got fucking staked and she needs to do something about it but then something hits her in the head and everything goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/639214923237507073/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-iii-1-they)


	7. Part III - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She’s tied up. She’s tied up and her arms are raised on each side of her and her legs are spread apart and it’s Tanner and Seth torturing Amaru all over again and it hurts, it hurts so much, she can’t control her breathing and she hears a blood curdling scream and realizes after a few second that it’s _her_. She’s the one screaming. 

She opens her eyes. There’s no more ringing in her ears, but a throbbing headache has taken its place. She blinks and lifts her head from where it’s hanging over her chest. 

She’s tied up. She’s tied up and her arms are raised on each side of her and her legs are spread apart and it’s Tanner and Seth torturing Amaru all over again and it hurts, it hurts so much, she can’t control her breathing and she hears a blood curdling scream and realizes after a few second that it’s _her._ She’s the one screaming. 

A door opens in the opposite wall and a man comes in. He’s skinny, with a face like a weasel and a cowboy hat that reminds her of Freddie’s. The man smiles and raises his fist. When he opens it, a necklace dangles from his fingers and her blood freezes. He's holding Amaru’s amulet, the one she thought they had kicked back into hell.

The man starts talking but she can’t hear anything over the buzzing rushing in her head and the panicked stream of _no no no nononono_ she feels escaping her lips. He advances on her and she tries to get away but she _can’t_ , the chains around her limbs are too thick, pulled taut, too solid for her human strength, no matter how much she fights them. He holds the amulet to her face and it touches her cheek and she feels her skin sizzle under the metal. The shriek that comes out of her is all but human, and only stops when a loud gunshot echoes through her cell.

Blood and brain matter splatter all over her as she sees the man’s head explode. She’s screaming again and then there are hands on her, working around her, but she can’t see with the blood dripping in her eyes and when she can finally move her hands and feets she recoils away from all the hands and she wipes her face and keeps on moving backward until her back hits a wall. Then she lets herself slide to the floor and folds on herself, her knees like an armor in front of her chest. She’s crying. Her hands are shaking and she tucks them against her stomach and she closes her eyes and rests her forehead against her legs and maybe, _maybe_ , if she stays still long enough, the nightmare is going to end and she’ll wake up in her bed.

She can’t breathe. She can’t fucking breathe and she feels like the amulet is against her throat, the chain strangling her. She holds her head and tries to breathe but she _can’t_.

She feels hands reaching for her again and she screams. She screams until she can’t and her throat is scrapped raw and she’s choking and tasting blood and ashes and her head is filled with this loud rushing noise and she can’t fucking see.

“Kate.”

A voice pierces through the static. 

“Kate, you need to breathe.”

She knows that voice, although it sounds shakier than what she expects from it. And the voice is telling her to breathe but she can’t.

“I’m going to touch your arm now.”

She can’t scream anymore and what comes out of her is a pathetic little whine. A hand touches her. It’s rough and calloused and she knows that hand. It used to make her feel safe. The hand touches her and then another and she’s pulled away from the wall, gently, slowly. The hand takes her arm and unfolds it and brings her hand to a chest.

“Follow my lead. Breathe in. Come on, Kate, you can do this.”

Then the hands cup her cheeks and wipe her eyes and when she opens them, Seth is kneeling in front of her, dirty, sweaty, bleeding, but here and alive. 

“Just keep breathing,” he tells her and she nods. He leans his forehead against her. “Keep breathing,” he repeats softly. She moves her hands from his chest and wraps her arms around his neck. “It’s over.”

It takes what feels like hours but is probably just long minutes to get her breathing under control. 

“Can you stand?” Seth asks her. 

She nods weakly but when she tries to get to her feet, her legs turn into jelly and she’s only saved from crashing to the ground by Seth’s quick reflexes. He puts an arm around her back and the other under her knees and lifts her. She lets her head lean against his chest and closes her eyes.

“Destroy that fucking thing,” he says to someone else. His chest vibrates against her and she breathes in his scent and it’s all she needs to know she’s safe.

She wakes up on a motel bed. The blinds are shut over the windows. There’s only one bed and a gun on the table next to the door. She turns her head to the other side.

“Seth,” she rasps when she sees him slouched on a chair next to the bed.

He startles but his eyes find hers immediately. “Hey.”

She moves her hand to the edge of the bed. He grasps it and lets out a shaky exhale and a quiet but heartfelt “fuck.”

“Is it over?” she asks and winces at how hoarse her voice is, how much her throat burns. 

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s fucking over. For good this time. I promise.”

She closes her eyes and a tear rolls down her cheek. His hand tightens around hers. She feels his other hand in her hair, pushing it away from her face. 

“I’m gonna tell the others you’re awake,” he says. 

Her eyes fly open. “Don’t go. Please.”

“They’re just in the next room. I said I would tell them as soon as you’re awake. They’re gonna break down the goddamn door if I don’t.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“I’m not. I’m never leaving you again, Kate. I’ll be right back, I swear.”

He kisses her temple, then her forehead, and then he steps away. She watches him go to the door and she forces herself to stay calm when it closes after him. 

Then the door opens again, and he’s back, Diego, Dorian, Richie and Kisa behind him. Her heart gives a painful lurch. 

“Where’s Miguel?” she asks and there’s no mistaking the desperation in her voice. 

“He’s fine,” Dorian says immediately. “He’s—”

“I’m right here.”

Miguel rushes into the room after Kisa. He looks paler than usual but he’s alive and she starts crying again. 

The mattress sags under their weight as they all pile up around her like they always do after a difficult job. She touches them, making sure they’re real and whole and it’s only after Miguel shows her the unbroken skin over his heart that the vice around her chest loosens. 

“I thought you were dead,” she murmurs with her hand on his chest.

“I’m right here,” he says.

Dorian touches her free hand. “We’re not going anywhere.”

She sags against Diego. 

“I can’t lose you,” she says. “Any of you,” she adds, lifting her eyes to Richie, Kisa and Seth, who are standing in front of the bed. 

“You won’t,” Kisa says. “It’s all over now.”

The culebras leave her room at nightfall, talking about needing to feed, and she’s alone with Seth once again.

“Do you want to eat?”

She shakes her head. “I need a shower.”

She gets carefully out of the bed and he stays near her like he’s expecting her to collapse again. She walks to the bathroom on unsteady legs but she doesn’t need to lean on him. He stops in the doorway. 

“Don’t lock the door. Please.”

She nods. 

She starts closing the door and stops halfway through. 

“Kate?”

“I don’t have any other clothes,” she mumbles, looking down at her torn and blood splattered tank top and jeans. 

“I might have something in the car. I’ll be right back.”

She turns away and toward the sink. She doesn’t want to watch him leave the room again, so she focuses on her reflection. There’s no burn where the amulet touched her. There’s no strangulation marks around her throat. Just massive bruises over her temple and jaw and blood splattered all over her. She pushes away the memory of seeing the man’s head explode inches from her face and turns on the shower.

The front door opens and soon Seth appears behind her in the mirror, a bunch of clothes in his hands. 

“You gonna be okay in there?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

Seth is lying down on the bed when she comes out of the bathroom wearing his henley and a pair of boxers. She crawls on the bed and slots herself against his side. 

“Thanks for coming for me,” she says softly, barely above a whisper.

He rolls over so they’re face to face. He tucks a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “I’ll always come for you. You gotta know that. And I don’t care if I have to move in Kisa’s lair, but I’m never letting you out of my sight again.”

She nods and gives him a watery smile. “I’m okay with that.”

“We’re gonna have to get you a giant bed if those boys of yours keep piling up in it like a bunch of puppies. We’ll end up crushed to death otherwise.”

“You're assuming they'll let you in the bed.”

“I thought you were the boss of them.”

“They’re very protective.”

As it turns out, Seth doesn’t have to move to Kisa's base.

“I’m going back to Mexico,” she announces when they come back from feeding. “Texas was always supposed to be temporary until we dealt with those Amaru bootlickers,” she adds like an afterthought. “You can come with or you can stay here. It’s your choice, _mija_.”

She looks at Diego, Dorian and Miguel, feels the panic rising in her throat.

Diego steps forward and puts his large hands on her shoulders and she takes a second to appreciate how it grounds her. “Whatever you decide, we’re staying with you, kiddo,” he tells her in his deep calming voice.

“You are?”

“You’re our _hermana_. You’re family,” Miguel says. “It’s gonna take more than that for you to get rid of us, remember?”

She chuckles weakly but smiles at them. “Are you okay with us moving to Jed’s with them?” she asks and she points at Seth and Richie.

Dorian shrugs. “We weren’t exactly expecting anything else.”

She squints at them. “Was there a bet?”

“Nope.”

“You’re a terrible liar. Stop making money off my back or share the profits, you motherfuckers.”

She’s on the roof at Jacknife Jed’s a week later. It’s their first night here and her boys are at the bar, busy drinking as much as possible since Richie has said that their drinks were on the house. A welcome gift or something. She went through three rounds of tequila shots before the music and the crowd and the laughter and the shouts overwhelmed her and she needed to get away.

She’s sitting on the concrete, her head tilted up to the stars. It’s a strange feeling, being back here after everything that happened in the past two years. The bar hasn’t changed but the living space has. It’s less cold and impersonal, less like someone just decided to stick a bunch of sterile bedrooms into a warehouse, and more like what she imagines a college dorm looks like. It doesn’t have the military feel Kisa’s base had either. If she’s being honest with herself, and she tries to be these days, it feels like something that could become a home.

“Got room for one more?” Seth calls from behind her.

She looks over her shoulder. He’s standing by the access door.

“Got something to offer?” she calls back.

He holds out a bottle. She chuckles and pats the concrete next to her. 

“What are you doing here all alone?” he asks as he lowers himself to the ground.

“Needed some peace and quiet.”

“You okay?”

She runs a hand through her hair, pushing it back. “Yeah. I’m just. Not a big fan of crowds, still.”

He unscrews the bottle and offers it to her. She takes it, takes a mouthful of whatever it is that he brought and swallows with a grimace. She wasn’t expecting rum. He laughs, low in his throat, and when she glances at him, her heart stutters. He’s smiling and she’s never seen him smile so freely, like he doesn’t have a care in the world. He looks...lighter. Unburdened. The corners of his eyes crinkle and she can hear Miguel and Dorian making bets in her head.

She gives him the bottle back.

“Why are _you_ here?” she asks with a grin.

He takes a sip and shrugs. “Couldn’t see you down there. I was wondering where you’d run off to. Or if you had found another poor fucker to boss around.”

“Well, I hadn’t, but now that you’re here…”

“Oh, is that how it’s gonna be?” he teases, knocking his shoulder into hers. 

She pushes back. “Were you expecting anything else?”

“Eh. Not really.”

They pass the bottle back and forth between them. The night is clear, the sky full of stars, and she finds herself tracing constellations with her eyes, trying to remember their names, the myths behind them.

“Richie knows all about that shit,” Seth says.

She looks at him. “Hm?”

“The stars,” he explains, his eyes still to the sky. “We used to stay hours looking at them when we were kids.” He takes a swig. “I didn’t really care for that stuff, but Richie was obsessed, so…”

She smiles softly. He glances down at her and his lips turn up in a self conscious smile, like he’s embarrassed to have admitted doing something for the sake of his brother. As if she isn’t already aware of just how far he’ll go for Richie. As if the whole goddamn world doesn’t know.

“Are you really okay?” he asks. They’re lying down side by side on the roof, the bottle forgotten somewhere around them. “With being here?”

“I think so. It’s gonna take me awhile to adjust to not being a member of—what did you call it again? SWAT Culebra Edition?”

He snorts. “You gotta admit, it fits.”

“Yeah, I guess it does. I don’t really know how we’re gonna adapt to not doing that anymore.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“How do you know?”

He turns his head toward her, then raises himself enough to lean on one elbow. “Take a look at all the shit you went through in the last years. You’ve always found a way to adapt and survive, even in the worst fucking situations.” He sighs, then sits up and looks around them. He locates the bottle and grabs it, but puts it back down when he sees it’s empty. He leans forward, his elbows on his knees and speaks up again. “You always manage to make the best of anything. Even shit everyone else would see as a lost fucking cause.”

She frowns. It feels like he’s not talking about her new career path anymore, the familiar bitter edge of self loathing creeping in his voice. She sits up and brings a hand up to his shoulder. He startles when she touches him. 

“Are you going all martyr on me again, Gecko?” she asks, hoping it will come out light despite the underlying truth of her words.

He gives her a poor attempt at a smile. “Nah.”

“Good. Otherwise I would have to remind you, _again_ , that I chose you. And I will continue to choose you.”

He stares at her and she can’t read his face in the darkness, but she feels something suspended between them, like she crossed a line and how the hell are there still lines between them?

“Kate, I—”

“ _Jefe_! You up there?” a voice yells from underneath them and Seth’s face comes back to life. 

He rolls his eyes, stands up and walks to the edge of the roof. “What?!” he barks out.

“We have a situation!”

“Then deal with it, you fucking jackass! What am I paying you for?”

She laughs quietly and lies back down, tuning out the rest of the conversation. She closes her eyes. The rum was disgusting but it loosened her muscles nicely and it feels like her body is sinking into the concrete. She could very well fall asleep here, which she knows isn’t the brightest idea given how cold the desert can get at night.

“I need to get downstairs,” Seth says from above her some undetermined time later. “You coming, Sleeping Beauty?” She opens her eyes. He’s standing over her with an amused smirk. 

“I should.”

“Yep.” He crouches in front of her with his hands out for her. “C’mon, up you go.”

The rum hits her once she’s vertical and she staggers a little. Seth snorts and wraps an arm around her neck, pulling her flush against his side. 

They’re met by drunken chaos downstairs and Seth gets roped away by one of his employees to deal with a tequila crisis. She makes her way to the table she remembers leaving her team at and when she gets there, they’re all shitfaced. Dorian points at her and hollers when he spots her, Miguel puts a glass full of...something in her hand and Diego pulls her on the chair next to him. 

“Don’t think we didn’t realize you were gone at the same time as Seth,” Miguel says, and she can tell he’s trying to be stern and serious but it’s seriously undermined by the fact that he’s slurring every other word.

She knocks back her drink and gestures for him to pour another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/639493869491388416/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-iii-2)


	8. Part III - 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Next to her, Seth seems to have given up on consciousness entirely.  
> “I’m not doing anything today,” she mumbles into her mug.  
> Richie snorts. “Yeah, I wasn’t asking the feeble humans, Katie-Cakes, I know you and Seth are useless today.”  
> “Fuck you, Richard,” Seth says from where his head is buried in his arms crossed over the table.  
> “Prove me wrong, brother.”  
> Seth sticks his middle finger up without lifting his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> huge special thanks to my wonderful betareader and enabler, [Fortysevens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortysevens) for reassuring me when I had a massive crisis of confidence in this chapter. You're the best and your comments always make my day.

The only thing she recognizes when she wakes up in an unfamiliar room on an unfamiliar bed is the monstrous hungover currently turning her brain into mush. She cracks open one eye but everything is dark around her. There’s a weight on the bed beside her and another near her feet. Even in her barely conscious state, she wonders where the third weight is. 

She sits up slowly, fighting against the nausea rising in her. The weight next to her groans and it reverberates behind her eyes and she wants to fucking _die._

Once her eyes are used to the darkness, she recognizes the lump closest to her as Dorian, millimeters from falling off the edge of the bed, and the one by her feet as Diego. She peers over the edge of the bed and, sure enough, Miguel is on the floor, snoring. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had started sleeping as Dorian’s big spoon and fallen from the bed afterwards.

She chuckles. Not a great idea for her headache. She winces and pinches the bridge of her nose. She doesn’t remember much of her night after that first bottle of bourbon they shared once she came back from the roof, but clearly she hasn’t made smart choices. Although she is fully dressed, not bleeding, and in the room she put her stuff in when they first arrived at Jed’s, so she supposes it could be worse. She also remembers leaving them to continue drinking and coming back to her room alone, which explains why she didn’t leave them room on the bed. It doesn’t explain why they still decided to sleep here, though.

Diego rolls on his back and rubs at his face. 

“G’morning,” he mumbles.

“Shh, no talking,” she mutters. 

She stumbles out of bed and in the general direction she remembers the bathroom to be in. She can smell the tequila clinging to her skin, her hair, her clothes, and her stomach is revolting against it. The spray of the shower doesn’t help waking her, but at least once she’s done and she has brushed her teeth, she doesn’t feel like she’s been licking the bar tabletops anymore. She grabs something resembling sleep clothes from her bag, gets dressed and flops back into her bed. 

When she wakes up again, Diego is gone and Dorian and Miguel are quietly talking between them. She groans and rubs at her face and, yes, that fucking hungover is still here, but she doesn’t want to die as much as before. 

“‘Morning,” Miguel says when she sits up carefully.

She hums. 

“Hungover?” Dorian asks and she can hear the laughter in his voice, that bastard.

“Ugh.”

“Diego left in search of breakfast.”

“Fantastic.” She pushes her hair away and stretches her arms above her head, rolls her neck until it pops. “One question.”

“Shoot.”

“Did they forget to assign you a room?”

Dorian frowns. “Nope.”

“Then why did y’all sleep here last night? I _know_ I went to bed before all of you.”

Miguel snorts. “Maybe we wanted to make sure no one else was getting in your bed,” he answers with a shit eating grin and he wriggles his eyebrows.

She throws her pillow at his face just as Richie pokes his head through the door. “Breakfast is ready in the main kitchen if you want.” And then he’s gone, not waiting for an answer.

She gets to her feet and waits for the dizziness and nausea to come and go, supporting herself on the edge of the desk.

“You good?” Dorian asks. He puts a hand on her back and rubs soothing circles.

“Nope,” she replies with one hand in front of her mouth. “God, what did we drink last night?”

“Not sure you want us to talk about that when you’re two seconds away from barfing,” Miguel remarks with a shrug. 

“Ugh, don’t talk about vomit, please.”

Dorian offers to give her a piggyback ride to the kitchen and she glares daggers at him until he raises his hands in surrender and takes two steps away from her. When they do get to the kitchen, Diego is flipping pancakes at the stove, two culebras she doesn’t know are bickering next to the coffee machine, Richie is already dressed in his full suit and reading the newspaper of all things and Seth looks thankfully just as hungover as her. She plops down in the chair next to his and grabs his mug, inhaling the steam before taking a sip. 

“Hey,” he protests approximately three seconds too late. “Get your own goddamn coffee,” he mumbles but there’s no conviction behind his words. She doesn’t give him his mug back. He gestures to one of the culebras she doesn’t know, some vague hand wave between the coffee machine, the mug she’s holding and him, and somehow the culebra understands and brings him a fresh cup of coffee and refills hers. 

“Do you need more time to get settled and should I start handing out assignments?” Richie asks the entire room after a few minutes of the boys wolfing down Diego’s pancakes like they were going to disappear and her sipping her coffee and wishing to be back in bed. Next to her, Seth seems to have given up on consciousness entirely.

“I’m not doing anything today,” she mumbles into her mug.

Richie snorts. “Yeah, I wasn’t asking the feeble humans, Katie-Cakes, I know you and Seth are useless today.”

“Fuck you, Richard,” Seth says from where his head is buried in his arms crossed over the table.

“Prove me wrong, brother.”

Seth sticks his middle finger up without lifting his head.

“Very mature.”

At some point during her second mug, Richie and the other culebras end up leaving the kitchen, having apparently decided that it was time for work. She doesn’t know. She didn’t really pay attention to their conversation, she was too busy slouching against Seth and making sure her coffee was staying inside her stomach. 

She pokes Seth in the biceps. He groans.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a hangover cure?” she asks. 

He turns his head to the side and peers at her with one bleary eye. “What.”

“I don’t know, in the movies it seems like every functioning alcoholic has a go-to hangover cure.”

The beginning of a smirk appears on his lips. “Are you calling me a functioning alcoholic, Princess?”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Are you denying you’re one?”

He huffs a laugh and groans. “Fuck. Maybe I should have a hangover cure.”

“Or maybe you could stop drinking as much,” she offers with a shrug, knowing perfectly well what his reaction is going to be.

It doesn’t miss. “Ha!”, he laughs sarcastically. “Yeah, you’re cute. I don’t see you faring much better.”

She grins. “Well, I’m only twenty-one, I can still pretend it’s a youthful mistake.”

“Calling me old after calling me an alcoholic? Ouch, Princess, I’m really feeling the love, here.”

“I’m sure you’ll survive.”

He snorts, rolls his eyes, then lets his head fall back on his arms. 

She ends up napping most of the day away, sprawled on top of Seth on a couch. She’s pretty sure _some_ people take pictures.

She asks Richie for an assignment two days later. She’s done finding her marks in the compound, done with doing nothing all night but hitting the punching bag and drinking with her team. She’s restless and the number of hours spent sparring with culebras doesn’t help matters. 

“I hate being useless, Richie. Find me something to do,” she demands as she strides into his office and plants herself in front of his desk.

Richie looks at her from his armchair. “I would love to, but it’s not like some Buffy action is required at the moment.”

She sits down heavily on the chair behind her. “I’m bored.”

He steeples his fingers and she feels his unnerving stare pierce through her. “What were you doing before the rogues found you?” he finally asks.

She sighs. “Bussing tables. Going to therapy. Running. Going to the gym.”

“That’s it?”

She glares at him. “Yeah, Richie, that’s it. I wasn’t exactly Miss Congeniality back then.”

Richie observes her again and it’s like he can see through her soul. It’s _Richie_ , but still, she has to focus really hard not to squirm under his gaze. 

“Do you think you need more therapy?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Everyone needs more therapy, Richie. Have you met us?”

“That’s fair,” he concedes with a laugh. “But do you want more of it?”

She thinks about it. She didn’t stay in touch with her shrink because she thought that would put them both in danger with the rogues but now that this particular problem has been dealt with, she could find a way. 

She shrugs. “Maybe. That’s not going to fill my days, though.”

“Do you want Seth to put you on the bar rota? I know you can do better than bartending but that would be a start until we find you your rightful place.”

She says yes, because even though it’s not a mission like she’s used to, even though it’s not a fight, it’s still something. It will be a place where she’s needed and that’s all she really wants. She has to reacquaint herself with an existence that isn’t a perpetual fight. She’s been fighting for so long, sometimes it feels like she doesn’t know how to live without a battle. Even though Kisa was always saying that they were getting closer to their goal, she didn’t actually believe in those words. She couldn’t see an end to their war against the rogues. She could only imagine the next job, and the next, and the next.

But now?

Now the rogues are gone. And there’s no power crazed asshole to take down, no machiavelic lord to defeat or no evil entity to throw back to Hell. And she doesn’t remember how to live without such a goal. 

So she says yes to working at the bar and she makes a mental note to make a video appointment with her shrink. 

Somehow, she gets used to bartending as fast as she got used to fighting. There’s a routine there, and she knows more or less what to expect from night to night. They have people just passing through, regulars from the scattered towns around them, truckers who pass by once a week, plus all the culebras on this side of Texas.

The bar is always crowded, but with the counter between her and the rest of the people, she doesn’t get overwhelmed. It doesn’t matter how many times she insists to Seth that she’s _fine_ , though, she can still feel the worried glances he sends her way, and tonight is no exception.

It’s a Friday night, their busiest night of the week and they’ve been running around like headless chickens, pouring beer and whiskey, slicing lemon wedges to go with all the tequila, and people are stacked to the counter three-deep, hollering at the staff for more alcohol. 

One man grabs her wrist as she gives a pint to the guy next to him. She looks at his hand and slowly lifts her eyes to his face.

“Be a nice girl and get me a scotch, darling,” the man says with the smarmiest smirk she’s seen all week.

She can see three different ways she can kill him, and that’s only with one free hand and no improvised weaponry nearby.

“I suggest you remove your hand immediately if you don’t want to lose it,” she says, exaggerating her Texan drawl, her fake “nice girl from a small churchy town” smile firmly in place.

From the corner of her eye, she sees Kalinda stiffening. She clocks a few regulars around them watching the exchange with sharp eyes. She’s surprised she doesn’t see Seth, but given how the patrons seem determined to drink the bar dry, he’s probably in the back grabbing them more bottles. 

The man scoffs and she does her best not to gag when his heavy breath reaches her nose. 

“What are you gonna do, little girl?” he sneers.

The conversations in their immediate proximity die down. 

“The way I see it,” she starts, still acting like the perfectly nice girl next door, “you have three choices.”

The man snorts. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“One, you let me go and you get the fuck out of here and never come back. Two, I break your hand and I ask one of my guys to throw you the fuck out of here and you never come back. Three, one of my bosses sees what you’re doing right now and then, well, all bets are off,” she says with a tiny shrug and a smile like it’s a game. “So if I were you I’d go with option one before the choice is made for you.”

The man loses its smirk. “You threatening me?” he grits out, his hand tightening around her wrist.

She drops her mask. “Damn right I am. Now fuck off.”

His hold tightens again. She doesn’t hesitate. She reaches over, grasps two of his fingers and _yanks_. There’s a loud crack and then the man is howling, his knees buckling as he supports himself on the counter.

“You bitch!” he shouts, his face twisting in drunken fury, and for a second she thinks he’s going to try and lunge at her but Diego and Dorian materialize on each side of him. They grab him and take him away and she pours herself a shot of mezcal that she knocks back immediately.

“The fuck just happened?”

She pours another shot and looks over her shoulder. Seth is just coming back from his supply run, and she doesn’t know why he looks so pissed, she’s the one who had the deal with the fucker. 

“Some asshole just grabbed Kate,” Kalinda helpfully says before Kate has the time to gesture at her to shut up. 

“What?” Seth growls darkly. “Are you okay?”

She rolls her eyes, lifts one hand as if to say _Clearly_ and drains her second shot.

“I broke his fingers,” she says, grimacing a little as the alcohol burns its path down her throat.

Seth frowns. “Why didn’t you call me?”

She gives him a look. “I handled it,” she replies as she puts the mezcal bottle back on its shelf. “Diego and Dorian threw him out. Everything is fine.” She turns around, back to the patrons who have already forgotten the incident and are asking for more drinks.

“Everything is fine?” he repeats, staying close to her even as she sidesteps him to hear a patron’s order. “You had to break that guy’s fingers, Kate! Everything is _not_ fine!”

She rolls her eyes to herself and goes to the beer tap to fill four pints. Seth follows her.

“I didn’t outright kill him, Seth, or ask one of the guys to eat him, so we’re good, alright?”

Seth’s eyes bug out of his skull and his jaw clenches so hard she’s worried he’s going to break some teeth, but before he can say anything more, she puts a hand on his chest and stares him down despite the eight inches he has on her.

“Seth, I can handle myself. So stop freaking out and deal with your goddamn bar. Kalinda and I are fucking swamped here.”

He seems to deflate a little, long enough for her to get her four pints and bring them to the man waiting for them without having to dodge a frustrated arm or argue against Seth’s natural paranoia.

He doesn’t say anything more as she takes care of more orders, but he stays close, always near her side of the bar, and she can feel him survey the crowd pressing itself against the counter, as if he’s waiting for another asshole to make a mistake.

“Seth, I will punch you,” she growls at him when the feeling of being constantly surveilled gets on the last of her nerves.

He gives her a look like he has no idea what she’s talking about, then smirks when she glares at him.

“Are they fighting or flirting?” she hears someone ask behind her. 

She turns around to find Richie and one of his lieutenants—Markey, Morrey, Marney? Something like that—leaning against the other side of the bar.

Richie grins at her before replying. “Both.”

“I will kill your dumbass brother before the night is over,” she tells him as she starts preparing his usual drink.

Richie snorts. “What did he do this time?”

“He’s losing it because some drunk guy grabbed me and he wasn’t here to defend my honor or some crap.”

Richie raises his eyebrows. “But you handled it?”

“Yes. I broke his fingers and had the guys remove him.”

He laughs. “Then what’s Seth’s problem?”

She gives him a look. “Do you want a list by order of severity or just an alphabetical one?”

She slides him his drink and then leaves to deal with another order and does her best to ignore Seth for the rest of the night.

She doesn’t go to sleep at the end of the night. Instead, she goes to Seth’s room and barges in without knocking. 

He’s cleaning his gun and he barely raises his eyes from the table when she enters.

“Get up,” she says. 

Now he glances up. “What are you doing?”

She crosses her arms and glares at him. “You don’t think I can take care of myself.”

He puts down his gun parts on the rag and squints at her. “What?”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself,” she repeats and he raises his eyebrows then frowns and squints some more. 

“The fuck you talking about?” he asks with a little shake of his head. 

“Really? You’re gonna play dumb?”

“I’m not playing dumb,” he starts, pinching the bridge of his nose for a second. “I have no goddamn clue what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about the fact that you shadowed me the entire night like I need a goddamn bodyguard.”

He throws his arms in the air. “Some asshole grabbed you, Kate!” he almost shouts.

“Yeah!” she replies, her voice getting louder as well. “And I broke his fucking fingers without your fucking help!”

“I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to happen again,” he replies hotly as he stands up. “What’s so fucking wrong with that?”

“I don’t need you to be my knight in shining armor, especially not at the fucking bar!”

They’re both yelling now, throwing frustrated arms around and pointing accusing fingers at each other.

“I just wanted to make sure you were safe!”

She doesn’t shout anything back at him. Instead she just watches him, evaluates him. He’s standing a few feet from her, radiating frustration with every inch of his being, looking like he wants to get closer to her but doesn’t dare.

“Gym. Ten minutes,” she declares before turning around and striding out of his room.

“What?” he calls after her, confused, but she doesn’t reply. 

If he can’t believe she can handle herself, she’s going to show him first hand. 

To his credit, he does show up at the gym ten minutes later. She hasn’t changed from her jeans, combat boots and large t-shirt, and he’s still wearing the same pair of dark jeans he had on all day and his dress shirt is open over his undershirt. 

“Care to explain?”

She rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck. “Fight me,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

She assumes her defense position. “Fight. Me,” she repeats.

He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “I’m not gonna fight you, Kate.”

She glowers at him. “Why? Are you afraid I’ll kick your ass?”

“No, I just don’t see the fucking point.”

She advances on him. “Maybe if you fight me, you’ll realize you don’t need to babysit me,” she growls. 

He screws his eyes shut and rubs at his forehead. “For fuck’s sake.”

Then he turns around and starts walking toward the door.

“Hey!” she shouts.

“I’m not doing that.”

“Come back here!”

“G’night, Princess!”

And then he’s gone.

Five minutes later, she’s barging in Dorian and Miguel’s room where she knows they’re playing poker on the floor like the compulsive gamblers that they are.

“I’m gonna get shitfaced and no, I’m not taking criticism at the moment,” she announces as she flops down on the bed, a brand new bottle of mezcal in her hand. Diego keeps dealing the cards like nothing happened.

“Fair enough,” Dorian says without raising his eyes from his cards.

Miguel glances up at her for a second then throws a couple of bills on the growing pile in front of them. “Don’t puke on our bed.”

She watches them play, drinking steadily from her bottle.

The bottle is half empty when Diego turns to her. “What did he do?” he asks.

She rolls her eyes. She would find the fact that he doesn’t even need to be specific about who _he_ is or that he instinctively knew who was the cause of her bad mood funny if it wasn’t her life. “He’s a paranoid overprotective condescending asshole.”

Dorian snorts. “Yeah, we met him, thanks. What did he do _today_?”

She swallows a mouthful of mezcal. “Freaked out over that motherfucker from tonight, was on my back for the rest of my fucking shift even after I told him to fuck off. And when I told him to fight me he just fucking left.”

Miguel frowns. “You told him to fight you?”

She waves the bottle around. “Figured kicking his ass would hammer into his thick fucking skull the fact that I’m not a goddamn damsel in distress.”

“And he refused?”

“That boy has more self preservation instinct than I thought.”

She glares at Dorian. “Not helping.”

“Maybe you could use your words,” Diego suggests.

She snorts. “ _You_ ’re the one saying that?”

Dorian and Miguel chuckles and Diego shrugs.

“He does have a point,” Miguel says.

“I tried to talk to him, alright? We just ended screaming at each other.”

She brings the bottle to her lips, takes a swig.

“That’s what happens when you do nothing about your sexual tension for too long.”

She promptly chokes on the mezcal and her eyes water from the burning sensation at the back of her nose. “What the hell?!”

Dorian smirks. “I said what I said.”

“That is _not_ what’s happening!” she protests and they all give her their versions of a _oh, honey_ look. “It’s not!” she repeats despite the little somersault her stomach is doing at the thought. “I don’t see Seth like that and he _definitely_ doesn’t see me like that.”

“Yes, he does.”

“No. Nope. Not at all. We’re friends. At best, he’s probably seeing me as an annoying little sister.”

Miguel barks out a laugh. “Yeah, _right._ The last time I saw that much tension between a brother and a sister, I was watching that fucking Folgers commercial.”

Dorian points at him in approval. She winces. She knows exactly which commercial they’re talking about and, wow, it’s _bad_.

“Fuck,” she says softly before taking a swig of mezcal. 

It is not an actual revelation. She knew, deep down, she felt something more for Seth. She knew there was something more between them compared to her relationship with Richie or any of the boys. It was just easier to chalk it up to their past. The three months spent in Mexico, having nothing but each other. The closeness born from shared trauma. The companionship of having lost their brothers and their place in the world at the same time. The trust of relying on each other to stay alive. Being the one making sure he wasn’t going to overdose. Sharing their blood to save each other. Their _history_ as Diego has so simply put it. 

Sure, the boys have made jokes about them, but she pretended to see them as typical ribbing between teammates.

So no, it’s not a revelation, she was just deep in denial.

She groans and lies down on the bed.

Miguel pats her knee sympathetically.

She can’t not think about it after that. She used to be aware of Seth’s presence before, but now it’s more than awareness. It’s like she has a radar pinging in her head informing her of where Seth is in relation to her every goddamn second.

She notices every glance, every little touch. Until then, she had explained those away by the fact that he’s a tactile guy, but she can’t do that anymore. They’re working at the bar and he walks behind her as she’s carrying drinks and he brushes her shoulder and before she would have explained it as a “I’m behind you, careful with those drinks” signal. Except now she notices he doesn’t do it with Kalinda, or any other people working the bar. Instead, he warns them out loud. 

She’s at the breakfast table and he sits next to her, stretches his arm across the back of her chair and his hand starts playing with a strand of her hair somewhere between her third and fourth pancake.

They’re in the back of the bar, in the middle of the inventory, and she’s crouching near a crate, counting how many bottles are left in it, and he comes behind her, putting a hand on her shoulder and leaning over her to survey the contents too.

She’s lying down, reading a book on one of the couches in what passes as the living room, and he sits at the other end with a report in one hand and his free hand comes to rest on her ankles, his thumb rubbing circles in her skin. 

She’s pretty sure she has a tiny heart attack every time, no matter how much she wills herself to stay calm. Not one of these interactions are new. Nothing has changed, except for her new found realization that, oh yes, she has feelings for Seth fucking Gecko and he might have some too and she doesn’t know how to deal with any of this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/639855588232364032/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-iii-3-next)
> 
> you may have noticed that this fic is now part of a series and yes, that's right, there's more coming from this universe, so make sure you subscribe to the series itself to be notified when i post more about those idiots


	9. Part IV - 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She shuffles closer to him until her front is plastered to his back, wraps an arm around his torso and leans her head between his shoulder blades. She presses her other hand against her stomach and closes her eyes.  
> Seth makes a noise, something between a grunt and a sniffle.  
> “...Kate?” he asks in a sleepy and hoarse voice.  
> She nods against his back. His hand comes to rest on top of the one she has on his chest. He laces their fingers together.  
> “You okay?” he says, barely intelligible.  
> Is she?  
> Her hands aren’t shaking and she doesn’t feel like she’s going to collapse from the inside anymore, but is she okay? She doesn’t know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> second to last chapter!  
> friendly reminder that this fic is now part of an entire series and that MORE IS COMING so subscribe directly to the series to be notified when i'll post more from this universe (get ready for at least two more fics)

She wakes up gasping, the two spots where the bullets hit her pulsating with a white hot pain. She stumbles out of bed and rushes to her bathroom, kneeling in front of the toilet just in time to throw up everything she has in her stomach. 

She pants over the bowl, not trusting that she won’t throw up again if she moves. She’s drenched in sweat, can feel it run down her forehead, her neck, along her spine. She shivers.

She almost falls asleep slumped against the porcelain. She feels the moment she starts to drift toward unconsciousness and forces herself to get to her feet and clean up. Her legs feel like jelly and her hands are shaking. When she looks at her reflection in the mirror, her skin is so pale and ashen she barely looks alive at all. 

She lifts her sleep shirt—one of Dorian’s that ended in her duffle during a mission and never made it back to his closet. There’s no trace of the gunshot wounds. Her skin is unbroken, pale and smooth. There’s no scars. And yet she can still feel them burning, can still feel the agonizing pain and the coppery scent of blood, the gunpowder, the rotted wood planks under her. She takes off the shirt entirely along with her pj pants and steps into the shower.

Once she has washed off the sweat, she slips on a fresh shirt and a pair of shorts. Her bedsheets are all tangled and twisted and when she grabs them to straighten them up, they feel damp to the touch. She grimaces. No way she’s going back to sleep in that bed.

She’s not even sure she wants to go back to sleep at all. 

She leaves her bedroom. The common room is empty and dark. The clock on the wall indicates it’s 8 am. She barely had three hours of sleep. She goes to the kitchen, puts some water to boil. 

She makes tea and sits at the table with her hands wrapped around her steaming mug. The pain in her stomach is still here. She presses a hand against it, feels her heartbeat through her skin. 

Footsteps approach. She knows from the sound of them that it’s Richie. 

“Hey,” he says when he enters the kitchen. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“I was.”

He eyes her for a few seconds but doesn’t say anything more. He turns to the fridge, grabs a plastic box he puts in the microwave. He leans his butt against the counter and crosses his arms.

“You’re up late,” she says. 

“Last shipment was delayed. Had to wait up for it.”

“All good now?”

The microwave beeps. 

“All good,” Richie says, taking his food out. He finds a fork from the drawer next to him and starts eating. 

Afterwards, he washes the Tupperware and the fork, puts them on the dish rack. She still hasn’t touched her tea. 

“See you later, Kate,” he says as he leaves the room. 

“Good night, Richie,” she replies a beat too late. 

Her tea is no longer steaming. She stares at the mug. From the slight sheen on the surface, she can tell it’s gone cold. She stands up and dumps it in the sink. 

She wanders through the building, still doesn’t want to go back to bed. A heavy and brutal rain is pouring outside. She watches it fall over the desert, washing the red and ochre dirt into a darker crimson under the rolling gray clouds. She stays just outside the front door, until the wind shifts and the roof no longer protects her from the rain and she can’t delay the inevitable anymore.

She ends up in front of Seth’s door. She was always going to end up there. She lifts her fist to knock but thinks better of it. He must be asleep and she doesn’t want to wake him up. She tries the doorknob. The door opens soundlessly. The room is plunged in darkness but she knows it well enough to pick out the bed and Seth’s form on one side of it, turned toward the nightstand. She carefully closes the door behind her, pads to the empty side, lifts the blankets and slips underneath. 

She hasn’t been here since her epiphany, has been trying to limit how much time she spends alone with Seth. She still doesn’t know how to deal with her feelings. But tonight, she needs him next to her, needs to feel him, alive and whole.

She stares at his back in the dark. His breathing is slow and even and, along with the fact that he didn’t turn around the minute she stepped into the room, it’s enough to assure her he’s completely asleep. She’s still surprised he hasn’t woken up. She remembers him going from asleep to wide awake in the blink of an eye at the tiniest sound. She wonders if he feels safe enough in this place not to wake up at every noise. Or if maybe his brain can recognize her even asleep, telling him she isn’t a threat.

She shuffles closer to him until her front is plastered to his back, wraps an arm around his torso and leans her head between his shoulder blades. She presses her other hand against her stomach and closes her eyes. 

Seth makes a noise, something between a grunt and a sniffle. 

“...Kate?” he asks in a sleepy and hoarse voice. 

She nods against his back. His hand comes to rest on top of the one she has on his chest. He laces their fingers together.

“You okay?” he says, barely intelligible.

Is she?

Her hands aren’t shaking and she doesn’t feel like she’s going to collapse from the inside anymore, but is she okay? She doesn’t know. 

He must sense her hesitation because he holds her hand tighter and his thumb starts rubbing circles into her skin. 

“What can I do?” His voice, while still low and soft, is starting to sound more awake.

She shrugs. “I don’t know,” she mumbles into his shirt. “Just—just be here?”

He lets go of her hand and rolls until they’re face to face. He gently pushes away the strands of hair covering half her face and lets his hand rest on the side of her neck. 

“I’m here.”

Despite the lack of light, she sees his eyes fall to her stomach, where her hand is still clutching her sleep shirt. 

“Nightmare?”

“Memory,” she replies. “At first.” She lays her free hand over his heart and keeps her eyes on it. “Carlos shot me and I was falling to the ground.” She glances up briefly. “I was bleeding out but this time, Scott and Richie weren’t there next to me. You were and—” She swallows around the knot in her throat, presses harder on his chest, searching for his heartbeat. “Amaru was draining you. And I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything.”

Her voice breaks and tears start burning her eyes.

“Hey,” Seth says softly. “I’m here. Safe and sound. Everything’s fine, see?"

“I can’t lose you,” she whispers. Her hand clenches on his shirt. 

“Hey, look at me,” he says softly as his thumb rubs the side of her neck. “Kate, look at me.” She tears her eyes away from his chest. “I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

She nods and her gaze falls from his eyes to his lips and under her hand his heartbeat quickens and she thinks of what the boys said. Could this be it? 

“Seth,” she says.

“Yeah.”

She looks up. “Do you remember what I said, before walking into Hell?”

It takes him a while to reply, his eyes searching hers like he’s trying to find a hidden meaning in her words. When he does, he sounds a little choked up. “Yeah.”

She slides her hand from his chest to his neck, his jaw, his cheek. He’s watching her and the movements of his thumb on her neck have stilled. She knows him. He was never going to make the first move. He was always going to let himself be a martyr, not wanting to impose on her any more than he thinks he already has. She brushes his cheekbone with her thumb. She can feel the difference of texture between his skin and the scar left there after Matanzas.

“Kate—” he starts, his voice low and shaky.

“I chose you, Seth,” she cuts. “You always say that you’re a selfish asshole—”

“I am,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“You’re not. You’re always sacrificing yourself for other people, no matter how much you bitch about it. But right now you can be selfish. I’m choosing you.”

Her eyes drop to his lips once more. He bites them.The muscles of his jaw work under her hand. She glances up. His thumb starts moving again against her neck, tugging her closer. She sees him swallow, sees his eyes go to her lips and up again, the _are you sure about this_ he wants to say and she nods. 

It’s soft. Soft like he’s afraid she’s going to break, like she might disappear as if she’s a figment of his imagination and anything more will dispel the illusion. He barely presses his lips to hers, his hand on her neck light, like he’s expecting her to change her mind and back off. She shuffles closer, opens her lips against his. Her hand slides to the back of his neck and she pulls him to her. He takes a sharp breath and seems to _finally_ realize that she isn’t going anywhere. She rolls them and pulls him on top of her.

“I’m probably gonna fuck this up,” he mumbles against her lips. 

She rakes her fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes as she scratches the closely shaved back of his head and drops his forehead against her collarbone.

“It’s okay,” she says after a while. “I might fuck it up too.”

He holds himself up on his elbows and peers down at her. He brings a hand to her face. His fingers are light against her hairline, down her temple and along her cheekbone, tracing her eyebrow, her jaw, like he’s trying to memorize her with his touch. 

“Nothing we do now can be worse than what we’ve already done to each other,” she says quietly and his fingers still. She sees the familiar shadow of guilt and self loathing clouding his eyes. She slides a hand from his neck to the side of his face. “Hey, stop that.”

“I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“I don’t think kissing me is gonna hurt me. Quite the opposite actually.”

“Kate—”

“Seth. Kiss me. Please.”

She half expects to wake up in an empty bed, Seth gone somewhere to freak out completely and thoroughly. 

He isn't.

He's sleeping on his stomach next to her, one arm slung over her, his hand warm against her ribs, his face tucked against her neck. She rolls on her side so she's facing him. He frowns and his arm tightens around her, so she brings her hand up and smooths out the line between his eyebrows. He doesn't stir. She snakes a hand between them, under his shirt and over his heart, beating slow and steady.

She closes her eyes again.

She can feel him watching her before she opens her eyes a second time.

"Are you being creepy?" she asks.

He chuckles and his fingers tuck her hair behind her ear. She opens her eyes. His hair is messy and tousled and he has a pillow crease imprinted in his cheek. She smiles and doesn’t hesitate, moving her head forward just enough to brush his lips with hers.

"No regrets?" he asks softly. She can hear his fear and doubt despite the light tone and the smile on his lips.

She brings her hand up, trailing her fingers into his silky soft hair and down the side of his face. 

"No regrets."

This time, he’s the one kissing her.

“I need you to do something for me,” she says. She lifts her head from his chest and looks him in the eye.

“Anything.”

“Let’s keep this between us, for now.”

He raises his eyebrows, then frowns and squints at her suspiciously. “What are you up to?”

“The idiots have a bet on us. I’m gonna play them.”

“You can’t lie for shit.”

“Have a little faith, Seth.”

Seth snorts. “You sharing the profits?”

She grins. “Only if you play your part well, partner.” 

She pecks him on the lips and swings her legs on the side of the bed. Pain lances through her the second she tries to stand up. Her good mood evaporates instantly. She gasps, folds on herself and presses a hand to her stomach, tries to breathe through the pain. Seth sits up behind her.

“What’s going on?” he asks. She hears the panic creeping in his voice, but the hand he puts in the middle of her back is strong and steady. 

“Phantom pain,” she grits through her teeth. 

He rubs her back as they wait for the burning to subside. She focuses on her breathing, repeating _I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay, it’s not real, I’m okay_ in her head. 

Her hand unclenches. She straightens up slowly, waiting for the pain to come back tenfold. When it doesn’t, she sighs deeply and slouches back against Seth’s chest. His arms encircle her automatically. 

“Fuck.”

“Is it over?”

She nods. He presses a kiss to her temple and she closes her eyes. 

“You feel up for breakfast?”

“In a minute.”

She sees Miguel smirk when she comes into the kitchen, wearing one of Seth’s zip up hoodies over her sleep shirt, Seth right behind her, but the smirk disappears and is replaced by a frown and concerned eyes after a fraction of second.

She doesn’t feel the pain anymore, but she knows nightmares and phantom pain always leave their trace on her face afterwards. She sits heavily on the chair next to his and Seth goes to the coffee machine.

“Everything okay?” Miguel asks.

She shrugs. “It wasn’t a great night.” Which is both the truth and a lie, some parts of her night were pretty damn awesome.

Seth puts down a full mug in front of her and holds the coffee pot up. “Refill?” he asks Miguel, who glances at him and nods. Seth fills up his mug and goes back to the counter.

Miguel turns back to her. “Did he help?” he asks in a low voice.

She looks at Seth, who’s busy taking out eggs and a few other things from the fridge, most likely pretending not to hear their conversation. When she looks back at Miguel, his face is the same, serious and concerned. 

“Yeah,” she says, matching his tone. “He did.”

“Good.”

She takes a careful sip of her coffee. “Where are the others?”

“Went for a ride in the desert.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t go with them?”

He lowers his eyes to his hands, clutching his mug. “Nah. I was worried when I couldn’t find you in your room,” he replies with a quick glance toward Seth. 

She rolls her eyes. “You worry too much.”

“That’s what Dorian said.”

“How d’you want your eggs, Princess?” Seth asks with his back turned to them.

“Over easy,” she replies, ignoring the way Miguel squints at her, probably trying to figure out why she doesn’t chew Seth a new one for calling her Princess. After all, she’s been pretty adamant that no one was to call her that the entire time they’ve known each other.

“Gotcha. You want something to eat?”

Miguel looks between them and frowns, confused. “You askin’ me?” he asks, a bit bewildered.

Seth looks at him over his shoulder. “You see anyone else here?”

“No, but you usually don’t offer to cook for any of us.”

Seth turns around. “Yeah well, I’m trying to be nice here, got a problem with that?”

“I’m just sayin’ that you never do that stuff, can’t blame me for being surprised.”

She can see the shouting match coming from a mile away. Seth snipes back and Miguel tenses and Seth starts gesticulating, waving the spatula around to make his point and she just wants to eat her breakfast in peace.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters as she pinches the bridge of her nose. “BOYS!” she calls out, loudly. They shut up. “Is it too much to ask to spend _one_ meal without anyone bickering like children?”

Miguel opens his mouth and she glares at him until he closes it. 

“Do you want to eat something or not?” she asks without bothering to hide her exasperation. 

Miguel looks down and shrugs. “Some eggs would be nice.”

Seth rolls his eyes so hard his entire upper body follows the movement. “Was that so fucking hard?” he mutters. 

She glowers at him. “Just make the eggs, Seth.”

He raises his hands in surrender. “Okay,” he drawls, turning back to the stove.

The band playing that night is pretty good and apparently well known in their part of the state if the crowd amassing in the bar is any indication. She’s working with Kalinda and Diego, filling glasses and pouring beer as fast as they can. They have to shout to hear each other over the music and the cheering of the audience and she already knows that she’ll be lucky if she finishes her shift without a headache. 

“Can I get an old fashioned?” someone calls. She peers over the beer taps. Seth is leaning against the counter, giving her his most charming smile. She raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Isn’t it your night off?” she asks. “Why are you here?”

“And here I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

Diego snorts as he slides three mojitos to the girl next to Seth. She glares at him from the corner of her eyes as she gives the pints to a patron.

“Right now,” she says, turning back to Seth with her fake _I’m a nice church going girl_ smile, “you’re just one more patron during an already very busy night.”

He gives her an overly exaggerated offended look. “Does that mean I can’t have a drink?”

“That means you can come over here and make it yourself.”

“But it’s my night off.”

“You’re your own boss, Seth,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

He crosses his arms on the counter and leans forward with his conman smile. “It just tastes better when you’re the one doing it, Princess.”

She gives him a flat look. “I know where you sleep, Seth. Don’t make me smother you with your pillows.”

He grins. “Kinky.”

“You two are cute and all,” Diego says when he walks past them with what looks like too many glasses for two hands, culebra or not, “but I need you to stop flirting and start bartending, _mija_.”

“I was threatening him, Diego,” she protests.

“And I don’t wanna know what shit you’re into,” he calls back with a smirk.

She takes a deep breath and tries to remind herself that the bar isn’t the right place to snap Diego’s neck.

“So. About that old fashioned?” Seth asks, then waggles his eyebrows smuggly when she glares at him.

She takes her break at the same time as Diego and follows him outside.

“You talked to him?” he asks as he lights his cigarette.

“He’s infuriating,” she replies and, well, it's not exactly an answer to his question but it's not an outright lie either. “Most of the time, I don’t know if I want to punch him or kiss him.”

Diego barks out a laugh. “Trust me, you want to kiss him.”

“Ugh.” She leans her head against the wall. “What does the betting pool look like?” He eyes her for a second, then pulls on his smoke, not saying anything. “C’mon, man, if y’all keep betting on my love life, I deserve to know.”

He observes her some more then sighs. “Alright.”

She keeps a straight face, but inside she’s gloating. She knew Diego would be the one to crack. 

“Dorian says it will happen sometimes next week, Miguel sometimes next month.”

“And you?”

“Next weekend.”

She whistles. “Damn, someone is underestimating Seth’s martyr-complex.”

“ _Someone_ has seen how you look at each other. That boy ain’t gonna hold out much longer. I give him two days, tops.”

She keeps her face neutral. “You have bets on who makes the first move?”

Diego nods. “Dorian says it’ll be you. I’m saying it’ll be him. Miguel says it’ll be mutual.”

She frowns and takes the cigarette from his lips to pull on it. “Mutual?”

“Yeah. Probably in the middle of an argument.”

She snorts. “Oh, like we’ll be fighting and suddenly we’ll stop and just smash our faces together like we’re in a fucking romcom?”

“Pretty much.”

“What happens if none of you is right for the timing?”

“We replace the bets next month.”

She tilts her head. “How much are you betting?”

“Two grand.”

“Each?”

He nods and steals his cigarette back.

Once her shift is over, she tracks down Seth to the common room. He’s alone, sprawled on a couch, watching football, but his entire attention goes to her when she comes in.

“I have a plan,” she announces as she flops down next to him. She snuggles against his chest and relishes in the feeling of being in a quiet place, far from tequila fumes and loud drunk people. And most importantly, not on her feet anymore.

He wraps an arm around her and kisses the top of her head. “I’m listening.”

She gives him a summary of her conversation with Diego and he chuckles at Miguel’s imaginary scenario for them.

“What do you want to do?” he asks when she’s done.

“We need to bring Richie in.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Hear me out,” she says, leaning back enough so she can look at him without killing her neck in the process. “Richie bets on when we get together, no one is gonna see the difference. It’s already the case, Dorian has been pestering me about the fact that I need to talk to you all night. Richie wins, splits with us and the boys can suck it.”

Seth squints. “Why does Dorian want us to talk?”

“Because according to him and the others, my murderous tendencies toward you come from the unresolved sexual tension between us.”

Seth freezes but his face smooths back into his usual playful expression so quickly she wonders if she has imagined it.

“Do you still feel homicidal? Because I don’t recall any sexual tension being resolved,” he says with an obnoxious grin.

She knows he’s expecting her to blush, to roll her eyes or at the very least to give him an exasperated look. So instead, she gives him her sweetest smile.

“We could solve it right now,” she says in her most innocent voice and Seth splutters and gapes at her. She gets to her feet, turns off the TV and holds out a hand to him. He looks at it, then looks at her in naked reverence, before taking it and standing up close to her, so close she can feel the warmth radiating from his skin. He slides a hand to her neck, under her hair, and the open awe on his face has left, replaced by a seriousness he rarely exhibits outside of life and death situations. His eyes are dark and intense and she sees the _need_ in them, but also something akin to fear.

“We don’t have to,” he says softly. “We can go slow.”

She brushes his cheekbone with her thumb. “Do you want to go slow?”

“It’s not about what _I_ want, Kate—”

She brings her other hand to his face. “Seth,” she says sternly. “Do you want to go slow?”

He takes a sharp breath and she feels his fingers dig into her skin. “Fuck no,” he says, his voice low and wanting.

She smiles and rises on her toes. She kisses him, but before he can deepen it, she steps away, then grabs his hand and pulls him to his bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/640113925144428544/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-iv-1-she)


	10. Part IV - 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What was that about?” Seth asks as they get into the car.  
> She slams her door shut. “Dorian thinks we should bang.”  
> Seth chokes on air and tries to camouflage it as a cough as he starts the engine.  
> “And what do you think?” he asks in a forced detached tone.  
> She smirks. “Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint him now, would we?”  
> Seth splutters some more, glancing between the road and her face a couple of times like he can’t quite believe what she just said.  
> “You’re a menace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my oh my, already the last chapter of this fic  
> thank you all so much for the support and amazing comments and i hope to see you soon in the next part of this series which should be out next wednesday!
> 
> (special thanks to my beta reader Fortysevens for putting up with my non-native english speaker ass forgetting "s" left and right and writing sentences that are not english at all)(you're a gift)

They ambush Richie in his office the next day.

“Thank fuck you finally made a move, Kate,” he says when they’re done explaining the situation to him, “God knows this dumbass would’ve died pining for you otherwise.”

“Hey how do you know she’s the one who made the move?” Seth protests.

Richie gives him one of his patented unimpressed looks. “Because I know you, Seth, and you’re an idiot.”

Seth huffs and rolls his eyes. She puts a calming hand on his forearm before he can insult his brother and looks at Richie.

“So are you in?” she asks.

Richie turns his piercing gaze to her and tilts his head. “What’s in it for me?”

“Money,” she replies. She crosses her arms and cocks her hip. “And the fact that you know something no one else knows.”

He barks out a laugh. “Damn, you know me so well, Katie-Cakes.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?”

Richie smirks. “Hell yeah.”

A week later, she’s in the middle of her training at the gym when Diego joins her and starts lifting weights. They work out together, him spotting her or holding the punching bag for her, and then she sits cross-legged on his back for his series of push-ups.

“Richie joined in on the bet,” he says somewhere after his 170th push-up.

She groans. “Really?”

“Yup.”

“Ugh, some megalomaniac villain needs to appear asap, y’all are too bored.”

Diego huffs a laugh but keeps pushing. “Careful what you wish for, _mija_. If another fucked-up god wakes up, I’m blaming you.”

She shifts on his back and lies down on it, bending her legs for balance. “At least you’ll be too busy fighting to speculate about my personal life.”

“Don’t underestimate Dorian and Miguel. They can gossip anywhere, anytime.”

She snorts. “I’m aware.”

“So you know they’re gonna continue talking ‘bout your life until you and your boy get your shit together.”

“Don’t act like you’re not a part of that,” she says and she pokes him in the ribs. “Also, I’m pretty sure you’re still gonna be talking even if Seth and I get together.”

Diego pauses in his push-ups. “If?”

She rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see. “Fine. _When_.”

“You got an ETA for that?” he asks as he starts working out again.

“Nope.”

Not much changes, really. She works at the bar and she drinks with her boys, she still trains like they can be called on a mission in the next minute, she texts Scott and cleans everyone’s guns, goes outside to watch the sunset or the sunrise. Seth still gets on her nerves and her stomach still does a little somersault every time he touches her casually. 

The only difference is that now she can kiss him.

Richie sends the two of them to New Mexico to try out a new tequila made by a small family company. She doesn’t ask Diego but she just knows the bet now includes them getting together during that trip. After all, it’s almost a week of a road trip and nights in motels, just the two of them. If they hadn’t gotten together before that, surely it would have done the trick.

Before they leave, Dorian corners her in the garage and puts his hands on her shoulders in a very solemn way.

“Please, _please_ , bang him,” he says. “I can’t deal with the way he looks at you anymore.”

“What do you mean?” she asks with a frown.

“Kid, you know what I mean. Put him out of his misery. He’s gonna fucking explode.”

She chuckles. “Are you saying that because you genuinely pity him or because you want to win a bet?”

He keeps his serious face a second longer. “Yeah, okay, touché,” he says with a small laugh.

“You ready, Princess?” Seth calls from the other side of the garage. 

She winks at Dorian and joins Seth.

“What was that about?” Seth asks as they get into the car. 

It’s not the one Seth usually drives. Richie told them to take one of the compound cars, what one would call a company car if they were living in another world. It makes her smile to think that what started as a criminal empire is now a mostly legal business. All thanks to a pair of bank robbing brothers.

She slams her door shut. “Dorian thinks we should bang.”

Seth chokes on air and tries to camouflage it as a cough as he starts the engine. 

“And what do you think?” he asks in a forced detached tone. They exit the garage and emerge outside, the rising sun bathing them in soft pink and gold light.

She smirks. “Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint him now, would we?”

Seth splutters some more, glancing between the road and her face a couple of times like he can’t quite believe what she just said. 

“You’re a menace,” he ends up saying, smiling and shaking his head.

She laughs and leans against the door so she can face him.

“You love it,” she says.

He looks at her and his face goes soft. “Yeah,” he replies, all traces of teasing gone from his voice. “I guess I do.”

Her heart misses a beat. Despite the fact that they’re now sleeping together, that they’ve had several emotionally charged conversations and that they’ve literally saved each other’s lives more times than they can count, hearing him being so open about his feelings still manages to make her stomach drop like she’s on a rollercoaster. 

She returns his smile and his eyes go back to the road.

She rolls down the window and the wind tangles her hair and the desert on the side of the road smells like dry grass and dirt and sun. She opens the glove compartment and finds old tapes next to a gun. She pushes the gun aside.

“Are you more of a Journey or a Chicago guy?” she asks, as she turns the tapes around to read the titles.

He glances at her, then at the tapes in her hands. “Guess we’re gonna find out.”

She slips Chicago in the ancient tape player in their car and music fills out the speakers, guitar and drums and horns mixing together with the rumble of the engine and Seth’s fingers beating the rhythm on the wheel. 

She looks at him and she can’t help but think of the last time they were alone in a car, him driving, her in the passenger seat. Well, she knows it wasn’t actually the last time, she knows he drove them to a diner to have breakfast after Matanzas, but she barely remembers it. Not like she can remember that time in Mexico like it’s a movie playing in front of her. It was night and they were covered in blood, Rafa’s blood, her hands were shaking and next to her, Seth was pressing the gas pedal like they had the devil on their heels—and in a way, they did. His anger and frustration were buzzing between them, filling the car and choking her. She was lost and terrified, she had just seen one of the last people who had been friendly to her die because of her. Next to her, her last anchor was unraveling, spitting words made to hurt her.

“Hey.”

She blinks and she’s back in the car, music playing, and the sun is shining outside. She glances at Seth. He extends his arm and puts his hand on the back of her neck.

“You okay?” he asks as his thumb rubs the skin below her ear.

He doesn’t have dark circles under his eyes anymore, there are no needle tracks on his bare arms. The hand on her neck isn’t there to push her away. 

Mexico is over. 

They’re two different people now, and they’re a thousand miles better for it. 

She smiles at him and she feels lighter than she’s had in years. 

“Yeah,” she replies.

He smiles back. It makes his eyes spark and crinkle at the corners, so she leans over and presses her lips to his neck, over the ink covering the scars Richie gave him. She feels him shiver.

“We’re gonna end up in a ditch if you keep doing shit like that, Princess,” he says, slightly choked up. She laughs and pulls away, then kicks her feet on the dashboard, leaning back on her seat to watch the desert pass them by.

They stop at a motel just before crossing over into New Mexico. She collapses on the bed as soon as they enter the room, not used to staying up all day anymore.

“I feel jet-lagged,” she mumbles into the pillow.

The mattress dips next to her and the weight of Seth’s arm settles across her back. She wiggles closer to the warmth of his body and lets out a satisfied little sigh.

His hand pushes her hair from her back. 

“Dinner?” he asks, then kisses the skin he just uncovered. 

She groans. “Just five minutes.”

He snorts. “Yeah, right. We both know you’re not gonna move from that bed after those five minutes.” Then his warmth is gone and the mattress shifts. He nudges her shoulder. “C’mon, Princess.”

She rolls on her back and glares at him. He only chuckles as a reply. “Just go buy some stuff without me,” she says.

He raises an eyebrow. “So you can be asleep when I come back and then you’ll bitch about the food being cold when you wake up hungry? I don’t think so.”

They find a family restaurant where the waitress looks like one of the ladies from her mom’s church group. She calls Seth “sugar” and she winks at her like they’re in on a private joke. 

She almost falls asleep during the short ride back to their motel, only becoming aware of their surroundings again when the engine stopped rumbling. She blinks and yawns and glances to the side at Seth when she feels his eyes on her.

His lips are pulled up in a tiny amused smile and his gaze is warm.

“I was wondering if I was gonna have to carry you inside.”

“Well, you’re the one who insisted that we go have dinner, so you’d only have yourself to blame.”

They finally slip in bed twenty minutes later and she immediately snuggles into Seth’s side, one arm slung around his chest, her head on his shoulder. He wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head.

She falls asleep in seconds.

The nightmares that wake her aren’t hers for once. She doesn’t know what did it, between the frantic breathing, the thrashing or the rasping sounds from his throat, but she’s awake enough to realize that whatever nightmare Seth is having is a _bad_ one. 

She turns around. “Seth,” she calls softly. He doesn’t wake up. She sits up next to him, touches his shoulder and shakes him a little. “Seth, c’mon, wake up.” She cradles his face in her hands. “Seth!”

He startles awake and jerks away. His eyes are unfocused and shifting constantly, his breathing doesn’t calm down. Quite the opposite, actually. 

“Seth,” she says quietly. “It wasn’t real. You’re safe.”

He sits up and looks at her. She reaches out tentatively, cups his cheek when he doesn’t recoil. He seems less manic, but he’s still hyperventilating.

“Take a deep breath,” she tells him. He inhales shakily, his eyes never leaving hers. His hand falls on her knee. “Hold it in, one, two, three, four, five. Good. Now let it out, slowly. Do it again.” Her hand strays into his hair, petting him as he breathes. “That’s good,” she says softly. “Just like you taught me, remember?”

He nods, an almost imperceptible jerk of his head. “Yeah,” he answers hoarsely. 

She keeps running her fingers through his hair as his panic attack subsides. Then he pulls her to him and buries his face in the crook of her neck, his arms tight around her. She closes her eyes and feels his heartbeat against her chest as she rubs the back of his neck gently.

“Do you want to go back to sleep?” she asks against his skin.

“Not yet.” He pulls away reluctantly. “Sorry I woke you,” he mumbles without looking at her. Even in the dark, she can see how his eyes are glistening.

“Hey,” she says. “You don’t have to apologize. How many times have I woken you up?”

“‘S not the same.”

She caresses his cheek. “It is, Seth. We’re in this together.”

He puts his hand over hers and nuzzles into her palm, kisses the center of it. She tugs him to her and he goes willingly, following her when she lays back down on the bed and pulls him into her arms. He puts his head on her chest.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” she asks as her fingers trail back into his hair.

He slips a hand under her shirt—one of his, actually—and rests it over her ribs. “Not really, no.”

“Okay.”

She keeps petting his hair and fighting sleep until his breathing deepens and evens out and she feels the tension in his shoulders melt away. Only then does she allow herself to drift out again.

Seth wakes her up the next morning with coffee and a couple of donuts. She sits up in the bed and inhales the steam rising from the paper cup.

“Ready for more highway and more desert?” he asks around his own donut, sitting at the table.

She takes a sip and grimaces when she burns the tip of her tongue. “Do you want me to drive?” she replies, putting down the coffee on the nightstand.

He glances at her and smirks. “I don’t think Richie would like it if we trashed one of his cars.”

She throws a pillow at his face. “I’m an excellent driver, you ass.”

“Oh yeah? Is that why you almost ran me over with the RV?”

She gapes at him. “Are you kidding me? You literally stepped in front of it.”

“Did I now?”

She gets up and doesn’t miss the way his eyes drop to her naked legs. She straddles his lap, wrapping her arms around his neck, and his hands settle on her hips like a reflex.

“You’re infuriating,” she tells him.

“You like me,” he grins.

“Mm-mh. Doesn’t make you less infuriating, though.”

He chuckles. One hand comes up to her neck and, as his thumb rubs her pulse point, he tugs her to him. He kisses her lightly at first, but then she adjusts her position on his lap and tightens her arms around him and suddenly his hand is tangled in her hair and the other is under her shirt, his fingers digging into the small of her back, and he’s biting at her bottom lip and she gasps and she _wants_.

“Do we really have to get back on the road this morning?” she pants when they separate.

“Technically,” Seth says as he mouths at her throat, “our meeting,” more kisses and nips and he really has to stop that if he wants her to understand what he’s saying, “is tomorrow evening.”

She really has to focus to get her thoughts together and then make her mouth form the words without moaning too much. 

“So we don’t have to leave right this second?”

Seth slips his hands under her thighs and stands up like she weighs nothing. She locks her legs around his waist as he walks them to the bed.

“We absolutely don’t have to leave right this second.” 

When they do get back on the road, it’s just past noon. She makes him stop at a gas station so she can get coffee, because by the time she remembered she had a cup waiting for her on the nightstand, after a couple of orgasms and a shower (and an orgasm in the shower), it was completely cold.

They manage to pick up a local radio station that doesn’t only play country music or religious programs, and keep the windows down to get some illusion of fresh air, because their car might be classy, it’s too ancient to have AC and it’s over a hundred degrees outside. She props her feet up on the dashboard and has to dig her sunglasses from her bag. At first, Seth keeps his shirt open over his undershirt, but he takes it off after an hour, rolling it into a ball and throwing it in the backseat.

He tells her about the roadtrips he took with his Uncle Eddie and Richie when they were just kids but already learning the business. 

She tells him about her family driving to Alabama to visit her mom’s relatives in summer and she finds it doesn’t hurt as much to think about that life. It’s distant and faded, like an old scar she has almost forgotten, but she can remember being that kid at the back of the family car, playing games with them to pass the time and hoping the next motel they stop at would have a pool.

“Want us to stop at a motel with a pool tonight?” he asks.

“That’d be nice.”

He puts his hand on her thigh, just below the hem of her shorts and keeps it there, his thumb moving back and forth mindlessly as he drives.

“I should ask Richie to build a pool at Jed’s,” she muses.

He chuckles. “He’s not gonna say no to you.”

“Especially not after I gave him the opportunity to win a bet and be a smug asshole about it.”

“Especially not after that. Bring him one of his goddamn horchatas when you ask him and you’ll have your pool done and ready to use in less than two weeks.”

She laughs. “Maybe I can pester the boys into digging it. Give them something to think about that isn’t alcohol, poker or us.”

“Fat fucking chance. When do you want to do the big reveal by the way?”

“I don’t know,” she says, her fingers playing with the lines of his tattoo. “Any suggestions?”

“Your play, your call, Princess.”

They find a motel with a pool. She rushes into their room and changes into her bikini before Seth even has time to dump his bag next to the bed.

“You do know that pool isn’t going anywhere, right?” he asks her with a smile and an amused quirk of his eyebrows.

She huffs a laugh and grabs a towel. “C’mon, hurry up and change already.”

He stares at her. “What.”

“We're going swimming. You wanna do that in your suit?” she asks with a pointed look at his slacks and boots.

“I'm not going swimming, _you_ 're going swimming and I'll be watching you from a lounge chair.”

The pool area is deserted at this time of evening. She leaves her towel with Seth and dives in. The water surrounds her and she closes her eyes, reveling in the quiet and the weightlessness. She swims a few laps, a bit stiff at first after spending practically two whole days holed up in a car, but then her muscles warm up and she's gliding through the water.

Once upon a time, she considered joining her high school swim team. Her parents hadn't let her, categorically against her showing that much skin to the entire world, or, God forbid, the boys at her school.

If they could only see her now. Not attending mass in almost three years, not saying grace, not praying, not even believing in the first place. Living amongst criminals and creatures of the night, living in sin with an ex-addict nine years her senior. Having killed more times than she can count.

Being half naked in front of a crowd wouldn't seem so scandalous to them now. 

She finishes her lap then leans against the edge of the pool a few feet from where Seth is sitting on a plastic chair, reviewing something on his tablet. 

“Why don't you wanna swim?” she asks him.

He glances up from his screen, then turns it off and puts it down next to him.

“I'm just not a big fan of swimming,” he says as he shrugs and leans forward.

She gives him a look. “You're not a big fan of swimming?” she repeats.

“Nope.”

“I distinctly remember you going on and on about beaches and blue agave back at the Twister.”

He snorts, but it's not entirely humorous, there's some deep bitterness there too. “Yeah, well. You can love the beach without going into the ocean,” he says with a smile that is too self-deprecating for her liking.

She heaves herself on the edge and gets out of the water. She takes her towel as Seth hands it to her and sits on the chair next to his.

“I spent a month at the beach,” she says, patting herself dry and not looking at him. She doesn't want her voice to be small or shy, but she can't manage a normal tone either. They haven't talked about what she did between leaving them and rescuing him, besides joining Kisa.

Seth doesn’t say anything, so she gives him a sideway glance. His eyes shift across her face and he frowns a little, like he's noticed the change, like he knows she's not reminiscing about one of her family trips anymore.

“When?” he asks softly.

“Right after I left.” She brings the towel to the end of her hair, wringing out the water out of it, an excuse not to have to watch his face as she reminds him of that time. “I—I just sort of...drove to Galveston. And stayed.”

Seth shifts in his chair, like he wants to get closer to her, but doesn’t know if she wants him to, so she stands up and sits between his legs. If her bikini and her hair soaking his shirt bothers him, he doesn’t say. He wraps his arms around her stomach as she leans back against his chest, presses his lips to the side of her neck.

“What did you do there?” he asks. 

She closes her eyes, remembers the feeling of salt and sand crusting her skin, her hair, her clothes, swimming and working out and exhausting herself to make sure she could fall asleep at night despite the bone deep fatigue perpetually inhabiting her body. She tells him as much, covering his hands with hers and resting her head against his shoulder.

“We should go some day,” he says.

“To Galveston?”

“To the beach. Any beach.”

She snuggles against him, chasing his warmth as the night falls completely around them and the air gets colder on her damp skin. “I’d like that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Wanna extend the roadtrip?” 

She smiles. “You know, if we’re not back in four days, they’re gonna assume we went to Vegas to elope.”

He makes a noise of protest. “Hey, I’ll have you know I have much classier standards than a Vegas shotgun wedding.”

“Do you now?” she asks with a laugh.

He pokes her in the side and she shrieks and tries to get away from his tickling fingers, but his arms are locked around her, firmly keeping her against him no matter how much she attempts to escape. She could get away from him if she really wanted to, but that would require potentially maiming him and she prefers him whole and uninjured. 

She’ll get her revenge another way.

She gets into bed while Seth finishes his shower. The sheets are cool and soft against her skin and her limbs grow heavier as she relaxes into the mattress. She’s tired, but pleasantly so, nothing like the utter exhaustion that overtook her after fighting off Amaru for good. No, this is the tiredness that comes from getting a little too much sun, from sex, from a day well spent. 

She surprises herself thinking “I’m happy.” And there’s no catch. No threat lurking in the shadows waiting for her to let her guard down. She thinks “I’m happy,” and there’s no buts about it. No guilt. She can just...be.

She knows, with the lives they have, that there will be more fights, more anxiety-inducing situations, but somehow, the dread she’d been carrying since her mother died is no more. 

Seth gets out of the bathroom, tugging on a faded black shirt over his torso as he walks to the bed. He lifts the sheets and lies down on his side, facing her. He smells like soap and laundry detergent, but also like himself. He smells like home. She shuffles closer to him until they’re sharing one pillow. He kisses her softly, sleepily, one hand under the pillow and the other on her cheek. 

“‘Night, Princess,” he says afterwards, sliding his hand from her face to her waist, barely holding back a yawn.

She trails her fingers through his hair and he sighs, closing his eyes and melting against her.

“Hey Seth,” she says quietly.

“Hm,” he responds without opening his eyes.

“Are you happy?”

This time he blinks and looks at her. He doesn’t reply immediately, like he needs to think about it before he can. Then he smiles the genuine, honest smile she’s only ever seen him direct at her. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I am.” He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you?”

She smiles back before kissing him. “Like never before,” she murmurs against his lips.

The next day, they drive the rest of the way to the town where the tequila company is located, and check into a motel just outside of the city limits. It has a pool.

“Are we supposed to dress up to go meet those people?” she asks, surveying the contents of her duffle spread on the bed, a towel wrapped around her, her hair dripping down her back after their shower.

Seth comes to stand next to her, only wearing a towel swung low on his hips.

“I don’t know, Princess. Never thought about it.” She gives him a look and he grins. “The advantage of always wearing a suit,” he adds, bending to peck her on the lips.

“Buy me a suit, then.”

“Now there’s an idea,” he replies, stepping away to get dressed.

She grabs a pair of dark washed jeans that don’t have any holes, rips, tears or remnants of blood stains, and a white button up shirt. She deals with her hair and does her makeup in a way she knows makes her appear slightly older. By the time she’s ready, Seth is dressed and waiting for her at the table near the door. 

“All good?” he asks, getting to his feet.

She secures her knife holster to her ankle and puts on her boots, making sure the weapon is entirely concealed. She’d prefer having her shoulder holsters with her guns but that would require her to wear a jacket and it’s too goddamn hot for that. She doesn’t know how Seth does it, in his three piece suit. She walks to him and adjusts his tie before wrapping her arms around his waist and kissing him.

She feels the gun he has tucked in the back of his waistband. He smiles into the kiss.

“All good,” she says as she steps away.

The evening is uneventful, the people who own the company are just regular folks trying to sell their tequila to bars and restaurants and to be honest, she doesn’t really know why Richie wanted her to go with Seth. She’s not complaining about spending a week alone with him, far from it, but she’s clearly not needed here. Seth is more than qualified to handle the business part of it and there’s no threat that would require her as a back-up.

She suspects it has to do with Richie fucking with the bet.

She’s definitely going to ask for a pool. A really nice one. Maybe even a hot tub to go with it.

Seth spends the next early morning on the phone with Richie and she goes swimming. They meet the tequila people again for lunch to conclude the deal and it goes without a hitch. There’s a moment when she comes back from the restroom where Seth seems bothered, but then she sits back next to him and he stretches his arm on the back of her chair, brushes her shoulder, cracks a joke, and it’s like she imagined the small frown and slightly tense lines around his eyes.

“You okay?” she still asks when they’re in the car, driving back to the motel.

“Hm?” He glances at her with his eyebrows raised a tiny bit, just enough that it tells her he’s trying to appear cool and detached when he’s really not. “Yeah, fine,” he says in that too sure way of his that he uses when he tries to hide something.

He’s definitely not fine. She gives him a disbelieving look. 

“You wanna try that again?”

He gives her a blink and you miss it side glance. The muscle in his jaw jumps. 

“It’s stupid.”

“I’m listening,” she says in a light tone.

He takes a deep breath, like he’s bracing himself against what he’s going to say. “They called you my wife,” he blurts out. And then he doesn’t add anything.

She raises her eyebrows. “Okay, and?”

“And I didn’t correct them.”

She still doesn’t see what the big deal is. Sure, they’re not married, but who cares about what people they’re never going to see again think?

“So what?” she says and shrugs. “It’s not a big deal. They can think whatever they want, it doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Seth replies, his eyes kept on the road but his right hand leaving the wheel with a frustrated jerk.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” he starts, “is that I didn’t correct them because I didn’t know what to call you.”

“Oh,” she says, a bit taken aback.

“Yeah,” he says more calmly. “Told you it was stupid.”

She frowns. “It’s not. I’m not sure I’d know what to call you either.” 

He takes advantage of a red light to look at her properly. “No?”

“I mean when I think about us, I just think that we’re together. I don’t really have the proper term, I guess.” She shrugs. “Boyfriend feels a bit...I don’t know...,” she trails off.

“Childish?”

“Maybe. And like it’s not _enough._ ”

The light switches to green. He turns back to the road but takes her hand in his. “Yeah. The last time I called someone my girlfriend I was sixteen and she dumped me after a month.”

She laughs and is pleased to see the tension leave his shoulders and a smile curl his lips. 

A few minutes later, they park in front of their room. She exits the car and stretches.

“Boyfriend and girlfriend doesn’t fit,” she says as he opens the door of their room, “and we’re not married or about to be, so wife, husband or fiancé don’t work either. What are we?”

He removes his jacket, then the gun at the back of his pants and dumps them both on the table. He shrugs.

“I don’t know,” he replies as he takes off his tie.

She toes off her boots and unstraps the knife holster. Then she walks up to him and unbuttons his cuffs for him. 

“Partners?” she offers with a smile. 

“Sounds like we’re doing criminal shit together.”

She looks up at him. He’s smirking a little. “Technically, we are,” she points out, her fingers moving from his cuffs to the front buttons of his shirt. 

He makes a face like he’s conceding her point and nods. “Partners, then.”

She grins. “Partners.”

She slides his shirt off of him. He leans down and kisses her slowly, deeply, and a shiver runs down her spine. She presses herself closer to him. 

“You don’t wanna use our last afternoon here to go see the sights?” he asks even though he’s breathing heavily and she can _feel_ how much he doesn’t care about anything happening outside of their room. 

She nips at his jaw. “This sight suits me just fine.”

“Alright then.”

The morning light peers through the blinds and she blinks slowly. She turns away from the window, Seth’s heavy arm around her holding her against his chest. She slots her head under his chin and falls asleep again.

Warm puffs of air against the side of her neck, her cheek. Fingers tracing patterns in her skin, trailing in her hair. Lips kissing her shoulders.

She smiles and opens one bleary eye, half her face firmly buried in her pillow.

“G’morning,” she mumbles to Seth, who’s leaning on his elbow, his head propped up against his fist, still drawing invisible lines in her skin and looking at her like she’s the biggest score he’s ever won.

He presses his lips to the corner of her mouth. “‘Morning, sweetheart.”

She slings an arm around his waist. He lays back down, sliding his arm under her pillow, and gently brushes back the strands of hair falling in front of her face.

“What time is it?” she asks, closing her eyes again.

“Somewhere around nine.”

She groans. “That means we gotta get up?”

“Mm-mh. Gotta get back on the road.”

He presses his lips to her forehead, then he carefully disentangles himself from her embrace. She makes a noise of protest that is definitely not a whine and he snorts. 

“Alright, you can stay in bed while I go get us some breakfast. Sounds good?”

She nods into her pillow and doesn’t even hear him leave the room.

“C’mon, sleepyhead, wake up.”

She blinks, rubs the sleep from her eyes. Seth is sitting on the side of the bed, holding out a cup of coffee to her. She sits up with a groan and takes it.

She feels more human after inhaling half the cup and a breakfast burrito. She drinks the rest of her coffee at a more leisurely pace, then they pack their things after taking a shower and get back into the car. 

Seth doesn’t turn on the ignition immediately after settling in the driver seat.

“So,” he says. “Where to?”

She turns to him, confused but amused. “What?”

“Want to go to the beach?”

She thinks about it. The idea of going to the beach with Seth is appealing, she can’t deny it, but she also knows that taking more time than planned to get back to Jed’s is just asking for the boys to track them down and annoy them to death. Plus it might screw the bet. 

When she and Seth take a trip to the beach, she wants it to happen without knowing her family is speculating about it. She wants it to be planned and deliberate and with the express interdiction not to contact them unless someone is actively dying.

Plus, she sort of misses her _pendejos._ Not that she would ever tell them that out loud. They would be insufferably smug for weeks.

So she leans over and kisses him.

“Time to go home, partner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [moodboard](https://tuntematonkorppi.tumblr.com/post/640509107788529664/everywhere-at-the-end-of-time-part-iv-2-what)
> 
> by the way, the Chicago song they listen to in the car is "25 or 6 to 4" and it's great you should definitely check it out


End file.
